Moving, Someday

Stranded in Suburbia - New York Times

Still, if we’re heading for a prolonged era of scarce, expensive oil, Americans will face increasingly strong incentives to start living like Europeans — maybe not today, and maybe not tomorrow, but soon, and for the rest of our lives.

[emphasis mine]

True words. We plan on moving from our current suburban location into the city in the next five years for this reason among others. The only problem is that work is about a mile from home right now, there's really no way we could move into the city without moving farther away. The way I see it, there are [] options on the table:

1. Don't change anything.
2. Ignore increased travel costs and move anyways.
3. Move and become a hardcore bike rider (at least 7 miles each way).
4. Move and change jobs to work closer to home.
5. Move and work out a more favorable telecommuting situation (increase from one day a week).
6. Move away away (Columbus OH, NYC, Portland OR, Pittsburgh PA, Cleveland, Ithaca NY are all options).
   

It looks like 4:1 moving to staying. But I'm real lazy, so staying put is still most attractive.

High oil prices are not a sign of "the bottom dropping out" or any sort of recession or dollar devaluation. It's simple supply and demand, the pace of oil discovery is slowing, therefore the supply of oil decreases. The only two possible outcomes are a change in price (upwards) or a change in demand (downwards). Unfortunately, higher prices must come before reduced demand.