Are we now in the “interesting” future of a world without oil?

The alternate reality game A World Without Oil began in a fictional world where gas prices just broke $4/gallon. Everything goes downhill from there. (See the Salon article.)

As you can see at GasBuddy, gas prices in real life have now broken $4/gallon in some parts of the country, especially California.

One interesting thing that A World Without Oil got wrong is it has gas prices significantly higher than diesel, which wasn’t a bad guess a few years ago. Diesel was historically always cheaper than gasoline as far back as my dad can remember. Reality turned out differently, however. The fact that diesel is more expensive in real life means that certain parts of the economy will be hit harder than others, perhaps in a different way than the game predicted. I wonder if it is a significant difference?