A "targeted industry analysis" unveiled by the Casper Area Economic Development Alliance last week contains the following observation:

"One interviewee suggested that the energy companies were almost panic-stricken in their desire to do business while the economic conditions are favorable."

Which brings to mind harness makers.

In Laramie, 50 years ago, the ramshackle remnants of a building displayed the words "harness makers," still faintly discernible among the weeds and decay.

Many years before those words were finally obliterated by time and a wrecking ball, harness making was a pretty good business.

Then Henry Ford came along with his mass-produced Model T. Horsepower became divorced from horses, and horses mostly became a mode of transportation for cowboys and tourist kids.

With the automobile came oil-based motor fuels to propel it, and for good and ill, a new road for the state to navigate, with no shortage of twists and turns.

After the shock of the 1970s Arab oil embargo, some analysts predicted oil prices would climb steadily, extrapolating growth curves from recent performance and peaks in oil production looming on the horizon.

Casper's population, some speculated almost gleefully, would hit 100,000 by the mid-1990s.

Of course, oil went bust 10 years later, and the state spent 20 years cleaning up the wreckage. Today, even in the midst of yet another boom, Casper's population has not surpassed 60,000.

A dimly familiar refrain begins anew. China and India and global demand will push prices to $150 per barrel, if not this summer then sometime. Uranium is back from the dead, and coal is king. The boom will last, this time.

But there are skeptics in Hanna and Jeffrey City, where last time around, homes were put on wheels and hauled away to places more sheltered from economic calamity.

So forgive us our doubts. We know what happened last time, despite assertions and projections that pointed to the contrary. It should be no surprise that someone would tell an outside consultant that their business plan basically calls for cashing in before it all comes crashing down again.

"The vicious cycle is clearly more than an 'urban legend' in Casper," the report reads. "Persons interviewed in Casper told horror stories about the problems that occurred in the past when the demand for local natural resources declined with little warning."

What we don't know thus becomes all the more foreboding. We don't know what might come next, and can't even imagine the devastation some bright idea rolling around half-formed in the mind of a chemist in Tokyo or an engineering student at Berkeley could ultimately wreak on our fossil fuel reality.

Something, that could make harness makers of us all.