My sweet cousin-in-law, Sylvia, wrote on her Facebook page "My heartfelt apologies on behalf of the incredibly short-sighted, greedy, never-learn-from-our-mistakes human race to Mother Earth for the horrible damage we have wrought upon the gorgeous Gulf Coast."
To that I can say Amen! ... but apologies are not enough. It's time to act. Our leaders (are there any in sight?) must marshall this nation's will to break our dependency on cheap petroleum from tin-horn autocrats (friends or foes) by going cold turkey.
What does that mean? Perhaps a $3 tax on gas at the pump; tax deductions for trading in petrol cars for electrics or converting to natural gas; subsidies for natural gas storage, transport and neighborhood stations; excise tax on all but domestically produced crude oil; subsidized research into alternative, renewable sources; and subsidies for bio-diesel engines. And immediate cancellation of all continental shelf oil drilling. The gas tax and excise tax revenues are to be pledged to these energy habit-changing programs and not to fund other federal goodies.
Will it hurt? You bet. So does going cold turkey off alcohol or heroine -- and our habit is just as destructive as those.
Now, Mr. Obama, Now....
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Hey Fletch, good post. It's certainly difficult to comprehend what's going on down there. You're absolutely correct about the lack of leadership in this country. But all of us are to blame (including myself and my regrettable investment in some oil and gas companies a few years back - no more of that).
ReplyDeleteTruthfully, though, this country is dominated right now by fear and anger - and perhaps justifiably so. When billions (trillions?) of taxpayers dollars are funneled into bankers' coffers in order to stabilize an economy that was largely gutted by those self-same bankers, you're going to have a huge swath of the body politic angrily rejecting anything that the Dem's might propose (healthcare, climate change bill, etc.). Ergo, Obama's stunning about-face on off-shore drilling just three weeks before the Gulf disaster - and yet another example of pretending to lead while actually just submitting to the status quo.