Pretty much in line with how I feel:
Here’s what we could do: Give gas discounts to cab drivers (at least initially) and metro transit systems and low-income folks, those who have to drive their busted-up ’78 Honda Civics to their jobs scrubbing restaurant toilets and flipping burgers and vacuuming the residual cocaine from the seat cushions of numb SUV owners. Everyone else, 10 bucks a gallon, across the board. Eleven for premium.
Take it one logical step further. Set up a national system whereby if you want to buy a vehicle that gets less than 20 mpg in the city, you pay a $1,000 Global Warming Surcharge and that money goes straight to a local organic farm, or school, or environmental think tank. And if it gets under 12 mpg, make it three grand, plus a slap to your face from a small, angry child. Got yourself a shiny new Hummer? You pay five grand extra, you can only buy gas once a month and all the truly beautiful women of the world will shun you like Charlie Sheen (oh wait, that already happens). See? Revolution is easy.
…
No, the primary reason such reform won’t happen is because, simply put, we are the most entitled nation in the world, perhaps in the entire galaxy. Americans are trained from birth to believe we deserve as much as we desire of every exploitable resource on the planet, be it water or natural gas or oil, coal or salmon or steaks, Big Macs or diapers or iPods or bizarre varieties of blue ketchup. It is, in a word, perilous. It is also, in another, slightly more devastating word, our downfall.
1 response so far ↓
1 M // May 12, 2006 at 9:35 am
If gas ever went that high, I’d cry. I’m not an SUV-owning gas waster — I’m a broke young worker with a car that gets good mileage who doesn’t even drive that much, but I don’t know where I’d get $120 for a tank of gas, and without it, I can’t get to work (a short commute, but not walkable by any means).
The second plan would be OK by me, though — if you’re gonna waste gas by buying one of those 8-mpg behemoths, screw you, you’re asking for it.