This NYT story shows the miracle of the market, in a way: As gas prices go up, fewer SUVs leave the sales lots.

Hmmm: What would the famous economist Homer Simpson have to say about that? :)

An excerpt:

... Gas prices are a more unconquerable force of nature. With higher prices at the pump sinking in as something more than a blip on the radar, and with several new passenger car models winning back customers, America's love affair with S.U.V.'s is taking a breather.

For the first time in 14 years, the passenger car is actually taking sales back at the expense of S.U.V.'s and other trucks, according to an analysis of auto sales data. The renewed interest in cars over the first four months of the year, while modest, is a pause in what has been the trend in auto sales for the last decade and a half: the soaring growth of the sport utility vehicle as America's preferred family vehicle.

Sales of medium and large sport utility vehicles - like the Ford Explorer and Chevrolet Suburban - have stalled, and the torrid sales growth of large pickups has cooled.

While much of the slack is being taken up by smaller and less bulky S.U.V.'s known as crossovers, overall sales of S.U.V.'s are down 1.7 percent while passenger car sales are up 3.1 percent, according to Wards Automotive, which tracks auto sales.

"I just bought a Ford pickup truck and I wish I wouldn't have bought the darn thing," said Mark House, 45, who was shopping Friday at a Toyota dealership in the Toledo, Ohio, area with his daughter, Monika, 19, who said she wanted a car so she could keep the cost of fill-ups down.

"If gas prices were cheaper, then I'd look into an S.U.V.," she said. "It's the gas."

Geo-greener Thomas L. Friedman -- who can say these things, because he's not running for election -- thinks Americans pay way too little for gas.

He thinks the U.S. should maintain a price of $4 US per gallon, impose a carbon tax and start building nuclear power plants again (two out of three ain't bad).

Unfortunately, a large percentage of people live in suburbia, where cars are currently a necessary evil.

Along with gas prices, we need to start thinking about building neighborhoods and cities where one can live without a car.

See The Inauguration, The Coming Wars and The End of Suburbia for more on this.