Yesterday, atrios noted that a world with eight dollar per gallon gas would be "different."
This led to spirited discussion in comments, essentially about how much "difference" Americans would tolerate before they moved, or started a war over oil.
Stirling Newberry posted a longer term look at this question a little while ago. The post looks at things in a time frame a little longer than the AC everywhere timeframe that has made Houston livable for five million people.
And it argues that the reactionary period we've been living through is unsustainable.