If I had closed my eyes, I could have been transported back, back, back to my mamma's house on Ridgewood Avenue, sitting on the avocado green and gold sectional sofa, my feet propped up on a curvy Spanish-style coffee table listening to Uncle Walter tell us the exact same thing.
Early 1970's ring a bell with anyone? Oil embargoes? Gas prices rising? Gas lines? People screaming and crying about how much it cost to fill up their 20 foot long Continentals and the V8 gas sucking Camaros or Mustangs?
This afternoon, my attention was caught by a headline quoting a woman bemoaning the fact that it cost her $100 to fill her tank. I had an "ouch" moment of sympathy, current prices are hard on the budget, but then upon further reading, I learned that she was pulling a trailer full of Arabian horses that she shows. Spoiled rotten wench. She spends more than $100 a DAY to feed those horses, I'll bet. I mean it wasn't like she was filling up to go to her job at Denny's.
And the American capitalist pig in me says what more do we expect? Are we not a nation of supply and demand? Doesn't the demand set the price? For decades we've been sucking down gasoline like a crack head who found the dealer's stash and expect it to be kept cheap because....why?
Because we don't want to conserve. We don't want to drive economy cars. We don't want to alter our life styles in any fashion. We don't want to be responsible. We just want to get in our cars and go when ever and where ever we please and never give a thought to the cost.
Ethanol from sugar cane, people. It is our salvation.
Energy independence.
Revitalized Southern agricultural economy.
Won't impact corn/wheat production.
Or we can just continue to whine like two year olds.
Loki sez: In the interests of conservation, I'm willing to give up my trips to the vet!
2 comments:
"History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely only once they have exhausted all other alternatives."
- Abba Eban
The wealthy will continue to indulge, drive big cars, consume to excess because 'they can' and it will be a status symbol. Unfortunately, too many of them are in positions of power and therefore, make no laws, rules, efforts to change. It is the middle class and those living in poverty who will suffer and must 'buy smaller cars' and hope for mass transit to come their way so they can get to work in less than 2 hours. Shame on us!
Post a Comment