A joke, via Daily Kos:
A big insurance company just announced they will give $10 million to anyone who can invent a car that gets 100 miles per gallon. Meanwhile, Exxon says they’ll give $11 million to anyone who kills that guy.
—Conan O’Brien
Reminds me of Dick Cheney dismissing conservation as “a sign of personal virtue,” not a basis for an energy policy, and this White House press briefing from May 2001:
Q: Does the President believe that, given the amount of energy Americans consume per capita, how much it exceeds any other citizen in any other country in the world, does the President believe we need to correct our lifestyles to address the energy problem?
MR. FLEISCHER: That’s a big no. The President believes that it’s an American way of life, and that it should be the goal of policy makers to protect the American way of life. The American way of life is a blessed one. And we have a bounty of resources in this country.
Future generations — our children, our grandchildren — are just going to have to look out for themselves. In this administration, we’ve got our hands full just grabbing everything we possibly can for ourselves. It’s the American Way. “Don’t start thinking about tomorrow.”
This short-sightedness has been a cornerstone of the Bush Administration, it’s true. But it’s not just them. It’s been U.S. policy for decades. When do we grow up?
B. Moore | 06-Apr-08 at 9:45 am | Permalink
yes, friend, GOOD talking points. nice place to start.
sunday morning is a good time to talk about selfishness and shortsightedness AND dealing with reality AND energy policy.
shall we then?
i’ll tell you about energy policy AND reality from inside my little cage here…
i’ll try to keep it short, but there are qualifiers to every point of view i suppose.
what about all those people who don’t like wind farms and nuclear energy and hydro-electric dams and COAL (which we got PLENTY of) and have pushed thru their demands as ‘none of the above’ into the nation’s energy policy?
what about the people that don’t want oil drilled here or there for one reason or another? you make greenhouse gasses from whatever you burn… you pays your money and you takes your choice. (but you WILL ‘pay,’ one way or the other; and there are no ‘perfect’ choices.)
i also heard about your Uncle Scam giving away FREE oil to that li’l bad boy N. Korea as ransom to keep him from developing a nuclear stockpile of one sort or another… but the bad boy still makes trouble…
(i got a QUICK fix in mind for bad boy…)
HMMM?
has this ‘shortsightedness’ not just firmed up the nation’s reliance on storebought oil from overseas? or outsourced LNG to power your commercial electrical generators? holding the knife at our own throats are we?
I SAY, let those who support such policies that will not allow DOMESTIC energy production should be the first to freeze their asses off in winter, or bake it off in summer.
no heat in winter and no A/C in summer would at least give them something legit to bitch about. and maybe wonder where the energy went, and why the coal is still in the ground?
until then, they should deal with their own HOME-MADE reality and shut the hell up.
like the fellow down the street from me that just last month bought one of them brand new biggass motor homes on a 55 ft. freightliner chassis and then bitches about the price of fuel for it… he can always take the sumbitchin’ thing back, ja?
and ‘electric’ cars: where you think the power for those come from? pixie dust? seems to me you just backing up the greenhouse gas complaint to the power companies, which are already being bitched about.
but i WILL AGREE WITH YOU, (for my own reasons) that the current administration has botched up an already shitty situation with ‘energy policy.’ (and just about everything else.) point no fingers at me. i never voted for THEM.
yes, let’s talk reality. yes, let’s all ‘grow up.’
but since when does you or me gotta worry about ‘our’ grandchildren?