laura bush - VEHICULAR HOMICIDE
Vandalism Spree in Van Nuys 2085that is the *best* non sequitur response i've ever seen... ;-) this seems like a pretty rough all-or-nothing dichotomy... i agree that a dog on...
Those truckers should read books like "Twilight in the Desert: The Coming Saudi Oil Shock and the World Economy" by Matthew R. Simmons. The author is a conservative and I'm sure the President already knows what he does, but Bush's grasp of science is poor and denial is the easier option.
This is not really Bush's fault, though. He's stirred things up in the Middle East but the oil itself is the root problem. What we're seeing is a petroleum-based, growth-addicted economy coming up against physical resource limits, with many people in denial. They are fixated on prices when they should be thinking about the resources behind the money.
Bush is partially at fault for not promoting conservation but he's hardly alone. Half the people driving full size rigs probably don't need them, or the boats they insist they must tow. Lifestyles DO need to be scaled down and the population needs to stop growing mindlessly. If we think it's bad now, wait until we have 420 million Americans by mid-century. By then, the global oil peak will be well behind us but demand may be 30% greater.
It's hard to blame ancient, decayed plants for not being more numerous, so people take it out on easier targets. You'll see a lot more misguided blame as oil reserves continue to dwindle. The sad result will be a frenzy to develop more wilderness to extract shale oil and tar sands, which have a low yield of energy-in-energy-out. Alaska's ANWR is just a drop in the bucket; 500 days worth of oil that may not come online for a decade. How Bush thinks that will solve anything is a mystery. It is a gesture against nature at best.
People have got to realize that this time it's much different than the 70s embargo when it was still about politics. What we're seeing now is the physical depletion of a resource on a global scale, with China and India trying to modernize.
Most people still don't get the full picture, and right-leaning media isn't helping. If I was President I'd order the likes of Limbaugh and Hannity to stop their endless anti-conservation tirades and stick to other issues as matter of national security. We can't afford to let Creationist fools convince millions of people that resources are infinite, and to continue wasting them. The public needs sound science and good advice more than ever.
E.A.
If any other species behaved like Man we'd call it a plague.
