Oil: shocking lack of shock

Piece on BBC about oil prices and politics. Excerpts:

On Monday, oil rose to $93 a barrel, only seven bucks short of its cataclysmic, futuristic high, and the world is still standing, we are not at war with Iran (yet) and there are no riots at my local petrol station.

[..]

Oil is the poison in the diplomatic mix. The need to buy it means that energy-hungry giants like China will find another reason not to side with the US at the UN Security Council.

The need to sell it means that countries like Venezuela and Russia can replace the stagger of poverty with the swagger of wealth without reforming their economies.

We are addicted to oil and so are they. The addict and the pusher are equally doomed.

[..]

Last year Tom Friedman, the New York Times columnist, said he welcomed the doomsday scenario of $100 a barrel, because only this would provide the necessary shock treatment.

It would finally concentrate minds on the strategic price of oil, on the way oil distorts America’s political interests, especially in the Middle East. 

[..]

I hate to say it, Tom, but we’re only a fistful of dollars short and the world continues to slide, even glide towards the abyss.

California burns, Georgia is dying of thirst, the Dominican Republic is drowning and I’m driving around in my beaten-up convertible with the roof down at the end of October in Washington DC.

Mother Nature is acting weird and virtually every scientist you speak to says it’s not just a cyclical phase or a freakish fit but a fact of science, which should give us sleepless nights.

Yes. Indeed.