Fill your tank

Seemingly out of nowhere, another Category 5 Hurricane threates the gulf coast states. We're seeing greater attention to municipalities' evacuation progress and contingency planning. I think it's unlikely we'll see the loss of hundreds of thousands of homes and more than one thousand lives with this one. Yet if Rita depresses US refining capacity, it could further reveal our national dependency on the automobile and cheap oil.

Hurricane Rita appears to threaten refinery and extraction capacity more than Katrina; Katrina affected a 7% capacity drop. As I write, refining capacity remains 5% lower than its pre-katrina levels. After Katrina, gas prices reached record highs, especially in the Southeastern US. Forecasts indicate this latest storm could make landfall along the TX coast, an area more densely populated w/ petroleum industry infrastructure.

In that event, which could occur within the next 36 hours, gas will likely push above 3$/gallon, so fill your tanks.

And if you've got a minute and want to scare the heck out of yourself, check out Jim Kunstler's latest post, which predicts, among other things, that storm-induced fuel prices are merely the beginning of what he calls the "long emergency":

The reality-oblivious nation of mall hounds, bargain shoppers, happy motorists, Nascar fans, Red State war hawks, and born-again Krispy Kremers is headed into a werewolf-like transformation that will reveal to all the tragic monster we have become.