Dear Anonymous Idiot....

To the anonymous coward who recently left a comment on my last blog post, I have three things to say to you:

1. Anonymous comments are not published on this blog. I have the balls to attach my name to my opinions, and if you want to be included on my blog, you have to do the same. I will soon post a note on this blog letting cowards know not to waste time on posting anonymous comments.
   
2. If you really think the pollution output of the 18th Century "Industrial Revolution" compares to the pollution output of the world today, you are truly an idiot. The earth's population in 1800 was roughly 900 million. Today, the earth's population is over 6.6 BILLION. Obviously, the industrialization of the earth has increased a thousandfold since that time. Oh yeah, people didn't drive cars back then either. So to compare our output of greenhouse gasses in 2007 to the output of the late 1700s is patently absurd.
3. Finally, if the science of global warming is so suspect and not to be believed, why is the neoconservative AEI offering payoffs to scientists willing to debunk it? I mean, if global warming is junk science, why do you have to bribe researchers to disprove it???? Sure, President Bush isn't the first chief executive to ignore global warming. But as far as I know, the AEI is the first group to try and bribe people to ignore it.
   

Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer has a great solution to decrease Americans' dependence on gasoline in his January 26 column: tax the hell out of it. President Bush wants to decrease gasoline usage by 20% in ten years. Adding a dollar to the price of every gallon of gas would smack Americans in the mouth, forcing us all to use less gasoline, and put more demands on automakers for fuel-efficient cars. As Krauthammer points out, it would probably cut our gas usage by 20% in TWO YEARS.

I'll put my money where my mouth is. To save the planet and ensure it still exists for my daughter and her children, I'd pay $4/gallon for gasoline. Of course, I've also made reasonable choices -- I drive a fuel-efficient sedan, not a monster SUV; and I live within a five-mile radius of my work and the places I normally go.

Americans pay some of the lowest gasoline prices in the world. We've been spoiled for a long time. Maybe it's time to pay our share. Europeans don't drive gas-hogging, planet-raping Canyoneros, because they can't afford to -- they pay the equivalent of four, five, even six dollars per gallon of gas.

There's no way to get Americans to conserve energy, no way to get the automakers to seriously make more fuel-efficient cars, then by hitting us all in the wallet.