Thrift

It doesn't really matter whether we think of it as Saving the Planet, or saving the country. It doesn't really matter if we're Environmentalists, or conservationists. What matters is acting responsibly. As long as there are Red Chinese and a burgeoning southasian subcontinent, and a third world Brazil that razes its jungles and an Indonesia that plows under its trees so it can grow biofuels -- well, we can't save the planet. Just like we can't really make other people's kids be responsible. Our power is limited to our own actions and actual responsibilities.

Driving an SUV is unpatriotic. There, I said it. If you actually really truly need one, cuz you're rescuing stranded mountain climbers or hauling cement over storm-swollen creeks, well, then you're okay, and not a fool and a pig. But gas guzzlers undermine national security. It doesn't matter that we get only a relatively small fraction of our oil from the Middle East. Mostly we get it from Canada, then from, yuck, Venezuela. So good and bad. What matters is that the oil is going to be sold, and the individual buyer is actually faceless. Demand is what counts, not personalities.

No, of course there is no actual energy self-sufficiency. There is a global market, and as demand rises, as from the afore mentioned China and India, prices will rise. Do I need to explain that? If we were to suddenly somehow produce in the United States all the oil that we needed here, right here, in the United States, well, do you imagine that the producers would charge less than the oil's global going rate? That would hardly be consonant with everything we know about the profit motive. It's naive and absurd. I'll sell to you for a nickel, when I can sell to him for a dime? Cuz I like you? Once in a while, maybe. Never always.

Even if we reduced our own demand, with hybrids and solar and other intelligent, responsible, virtuous and patriotic options, international demand will still be rising, and with it, prices. High prices are stifling to the economy. That's bad for America, and thus the world. What ever is to be done?

Well, obviously, for all that using efficient cars rather than grotesquely wasteful ones won't make a huge dent in global demands, it will decrease the demand created by actual individuals. Get it? You'll use less fuel, and so you'll save your own money. Not a hard concept. Less cash burned in the tank means more spent at the mall. See?

Some environmental issues are tough. No, we don't want actual unique species to become extinct. But we also want our loggers to make a fair living and provide necessary raw materials. Both sides are reasonable -- excluding the nonsense of protecting mere breeds, rather than actual unique breeding types. What's easy, though, what's not all that tough, is understanding that water is a far more potent "greenhouse gas" than carbon dioxide. Evaporation, then, is a much graver Threat to the Planet. So your decadent American pools should be banned. QED.

We consume because we are biological and social entities. We conserve because it is good stewardship. Thrift is a virtue. We understand that we have an effect on our neighbors and on those who live in far off lands. So we are generous as well as frugal. If we have two cloaks and give one to the needy, perhaps it will be returned. Even if it isn't, we will get another, because we are virtuous. That is economy.

The lefties have their Goddess. We have God. There is no actual rivalry, as Baal was no match for the Lord. We must ignore or oppose many of their rites, of abortion and perversion and general confusion. But there are means of theirs, if not ends, with which we can agree and cooperate. Alternative fuels and technologies. I love solar. After startup costs, it's effectively free. You can sell excess energy back to the grid. Cool. And my next car is gonna be electric. I rarely need to go farther than 120 miles at a time, and I don't need to go faster than 75 miles an hour.

The Goddess is a bloodthirsty bitch, red of tooth and claw. How don't they see that? But we gave up the Inquisition centuries ago. I don't care about your religion. I care about what you do, insofar as it affects the world.

We find common ground, and we cooperate to achieve worthy ends. Thus we see coyotes and rabbits fleeing side by side from wildfires, or sitting together on floating logmats during floods -- they are not enemies, at such times. They need not understand the nature of the catastrophe that has overtaken them. They only understand their danger. The lefties think the Planet is Dying. True, someday the Lord will roll up the heavens. But the danger I see now isn't from melting icecaps, but from empowering terrorists with our wasted petrodollars. Use less oil.

There should have been a Manhattan Project for solar power, starting from back in 1973, the first Energy Crisis. Our "leaders" were too busy being corrupt and stupid and venal and egotistical. Well, it is 35 years later, and we use more oil, and our vehicles don't generally seem to be any more efficient. I call it treason, and if not that, certainly dereliction of duty. Why else would a man seek public office, than to do good for his people? But we should be used to betrayal. It is the coarse of history.

You didn't know that about me, did you. I'm an alternative sort of fellow. Then again, that's what virtue is -- going against the general tide. The alternative is to sit next to pestilential beasts floating on a mass of knotted weeds whither the tide would take us. In other words, going to hell. Everything turns out to be about warming.


J