Hmm. I confess that I wouldn't expect consumption patterns to change by as much as 10% until something more like $6-7, at least not quickly -- it's *hard* to cut that much, requiring real behaviour changes, and I suspect that some of the belt-tightening from last time hasn't yet returned to its previous peak. (That is, some of the fat has already been cut, so making additional cuts of 10% requires more significant changes.)

OTOH, price rises of that level would probably cause the economy to crash again, and that would do much to reduce demand. At some level, the problem clearly is self-correcting.

So I dunno -- obviously, I'm guessing here. The real question is how easily people (and perhaps more importantly, companies) change consumption patterns. We may or may not get some hard empirical data...