Gas prices Schmas prices

I was upset when George Bush recently mentioned how he was going to lower gas prices. He said that he'd investigate price gouging, halt the refilling of the petroleum reserve for a bit to ease prices, and expand the tax breaks for the purchase of hybrids.

What we have here is a failure to communicate the paradox he's creating. Bush illuminates the benefits of "alternative" energy sources (By the way, stop calling this energy "alternative". Give it an adjective more easily taken seriously. No one pays attention to the alternate in Olympic swimming. Green energy is not the alternative to fossil fuel. It should be "replacement" or "future" or "preferential" energy.)

Bush needs to realize that the only way to change the behavior of fuel consumption from oil to "preferential" is to allow gas prices to rise. Rise and rise high. Europeans have long spent close to $5 per gallon for gasoline and 40% of their automobiles are diesel. He must know that as long as fuel prices are manageable for the majority of Americans, all his rhetoric regarding clean fuel will go unheralded. Sure, there have been more advancements in hybrid and hydrogen cars, but the development of technology is slow.


Wanna know why? Because of the following formula: high gas prices = demand for "alternative" fuel. Demand for "alternative" fuel = much quicker developments of technology and lowered prices for that technology. Little does Bush or any other policy-maker realize that the only way to save this environment is to ruin their own, personal employment. They must lose their jobs at the whim of frustrated, broke Americans in order for behavior to really change.

That's why we are so short-sighted. It will soon be less expensive to purchase a decent hybrid than an SUV. But it's the gas prices that will drive the middle class and wealthy from the gas-guzzlers to the prospect of fuel-efficient automobiles. So, let them rise. We'll suffer in the short term ... slightly. But perhaps we'll save our planet from extinction and be able to survive in over the long term. Priorities must change. Finally, we have the technology to do it. Now we need buy-in and there's only one way to get it:

Let gas prices rise!