Even as emergency workers and others slosh through the soaked, debris-strewn streets of New Orleans and other areas torn up by Hurricane Katrina, some economists fear American policy-makers will take the wrong lesson from the storm and ignore America’s larger vulnerabilities.

Katrina’s “immediate effect will be a bump in gas prices of maybe 20-25 cents a gallon -- although that might be mitigated if the president releases some crude oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR). But the price of gas is going higher anyway,” said Stephen Leeb, president of Leeb Capital Management.

...The more serious issue, Leeb argued, is how quickly one strong storm can tip America’s energy needs at a time when global oil supplies are tight and getting tighter.

“Ten years ago we could have turned to the Saudis and asked them to pump more oil. Now, the tap is 100 percent on,” he said. “This is a different world but that has not sunk in to the minds of the policy-makers.”