Of course, we should be worrying about the people of New Orleans.
But, the article is about much more than the price of oil. It is about the fuel that energizes our economy.
If the worst case concerns of some analysts turn out to be true, then we may as well be the people of New Orleans, because we will all, everyone of us, be among Katrina's long term victims.
So, it is not about being merely . . . inconvenienced . . . by shelling out a few more bucks at the pump.
Of course, it depends on how fast the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is immediately tapped and how fast we can start a large-scale exploitation of oil tar sands in Canada, oil shale in the Rocky Mountains, and liquifying coal from all over the USA as potential substitutes. Prices will be high for the short term but in the longer term as the alternate petroleum resources come online prices will start to fall fairly rapidly to something approaching current price levels. I think people are forgetting that the USA has massive reserves of coal from the Rocky Mountains all the way to the Appalacian Mountains--all of which can be converted to petroleum products through coal liquification.