Going up, up, up
All of this talk of $2 per gallon gas has got me all worked up. As much as I’m glad to see the issue of gas prices and, on a larger scale, oil dependency, getting some attention, I still think that the kind of attention it is getting is all wrong.
Take for example the “stick it to them” email that has been circulating. Snopes has throughly discredited the effectiveness of the meme, but I wish to examine it further, because it’s a signifier of the mentality that pervades the flock of America. Besides being a ridiculous way, economically, to mount a protest, it’s also guilty of a greater sin – ignoring the source of the problem.
If one does not understand why we are in this kind of situation, what’s to keep someone from going out the day after the boycott and pumping a few gallons without further thought to their little act of civil disobedience? Problems like this aren’t going to get solved by these little actions. They may never be solved in a manner that is satisfactory to the millions of car-dependent citizens. In fact, I hope that’s the case. Higher prices mean more realistic prices, which may actually cause some people to consider the true cost of driving and decide it’s not worth it.
This issue has also brought out a side of John Kerry that I wish he would change. By calling on Bush to pressure OPEC nations to produce more oil, he is just fanning the flames of the problem while simultaneously contradicting several of his environmental platform issues. Bush, I feel, is in the right for not releasing oil from the nation’s petroleum reserves. We’re not in a state of national emergency just because it costs Mr. and Mrs. Hummer $6.00 to go and buy a tube of toothpaste from their “neighborhood” Wal-Mart. The real emergency is the fact that we’ve let our communities degrade to the point where driving is the only way to get around.
