It’s Time to Demand Expensive Oil

(Friends keep forwarding schemes to “punish” the oil companies. Every year, it seems, there’s another e-mail round-robin urging us to buy no gas on a certain day, to boycott this or that company, to flood Congress with petitions demanding $2/gallon gas… Here’s my reply to the latest.)
Dear Sally and Friends,
Boycotting Exxon/Mobil is certainly not a bad idea. That supercorporation’s perfidy is indisputable, and taking it down a peg would harm no one.
But I fear that by demanding cheap gas, we are contributing to the problem,

not the solution. We Americans somehow think we are entitled to gasoline at less than the cost of its extraction, refining and delivery — — not to mention the cost of supplying arms to our clients in the Middle East, supporting a massive military, invading countries that don’t toe the line, dealing with the social costs of soldiers’ deaths and traumas, etc., etc..
All this is very expensive, and even at $4/gallon we would be shielded from the true cost of our desire to drive wherever we, whenever we want, without noticing the expense.
Make gas $4 a gallon. Make it $10. Make us grow up, cope and get creative. Make the added cost a foresightful tax, not further windfall profit for the oil companies. (By the way, a very heavy, permanent tax on oil windfalls would go a long way toward discouraging further oil wars.) Apply the revenue to an immediate crash program to rebuild our deliberately dismantled public transportation systems and industries; to develop REAL alternative energy systems for heating, electricity and driving (and NOT the ludicrous, polluting petroleum-based ethanol scams touted by the right); to make America truly free, safe and strong as only a self-reliant, sustainably powered nation can be.
By demanding cheap gas, we’re reinforcing the never-stated but very real argument that underlay the invasion of Iraq: “To hell with 9/11, WMDs and Saddam: What’s OUR oil doing under THEIR sand?”
It’s time to demand EXPENSIVE gas from a government committed to energy independence, to investment in America’s economy and security, to lasting peace and a healthy planet.
I thank you for reading this far, if you have, and urge you to join me in helping America grow up and take responsibility for its legitimate needs and wasteful desires. Before it’s too late.
Best wishes,
Bill

— — HistoryBuff