The Flames Rise With Every Fall (reprise):
If you live in the United States, it's hard to get away from people complaining about "rising gas prices". It's ridiculous, they say, the amount of money they have to spend to fuel their oversized and unnecessary automobiles with a depleting resource that pollutes the earth. Either i'm crazy, or the rest of the world is, but i don't at all see this as a bad thing. The only thing that's coming out of higher gas prices is people selling their SUVs, something that should have happened a long time ago. GM is reporting record drops in sales; they're losing millions of dollars because they decided to invest in giant, gas guzzling artillery vehicles sold as practical modes of transportation for wealthy suburbanites instead of more economic and globally logical automobiles. GM is the company that makes the Hummer, the most ridiculous vehicle ever to be passed off as a reasonable means of getting around. The fucking thing is named after a sexual innuendo; the only people who buy Hummers are men who compared themselves in the gym showers one day and discovered their horrendous insignificance in comparison to the majority of the human race, those of us that do not need to justify our existence with a moving middle finger. And now they're surprised that sales aren't doing well?
This happened in the '70s as well, as you may recall. Gas prices hit a spike and people sold all their big "look-the-fuck-at-me" muscle cars for something that wouldn't blow their paycheck on a tank of gas. The result was an increased interest in more fuel efficient vehicles, something that changed the industry forever, significantly helped the environment and made the japanese companies, smart enough to invest in what was undoubtedly the future of the auto industry, extremely wealthy.
The exact same thing, weather you realize it or not, is happening around us right now. Gas prices go up, American motor companies lose profits, the japanese, smart enough to invest in hybrid technology, are going to become extremely wealthy all over again. As gas goes up in price, people will realize their idiocy in purchasing giant, impractical cars and sell them, putting their money instead in vehicles that don't rely as heavily on a resource that is destroying the atmosphere as we speak.
I don't understand what people seem to be missing in this whole global warming thing. This isn't some grassy knoll conspiracy theory; this is a proven fact. It's getting warmer, glaciers are melting, snow peaked mountains are becoming bare, and we're all a little bit closer to the end of the human race.
And on another point entirely, hasn't anyone realized that gas prices really aren't that high? Okay, so you remember when you could fill your tank up for four fifty, but that was forty years ago. Gas prices rise like everything else in our inflated economy. And the oil companies aren't bull shitting you when they say most household products have risen more than petroleum. That's absolutely true. I don't understand why people think it's reasonable for apples, a renewing resource, to raise in price while gasoline, a quickly depleting fossil fuel that can only be retrieved by drilling miles into the earth's crust, absolutely must stay under a dollar a gallon.
So are heightened gas prices really a bad thing? Perhaps they need to be higher, if anything. Because we need to do whatever we can to show people that something has to be changed if you want your great grand children to reach retirement. Isn't it worth having a little less beer money at the end of the week to support something that is our only chance at saving the future of our species?
You may think i'm going a little over board with all this talk of global warming and alternative energies, but make no mistake, if the ozone layer dies, we all do. And no amount of money is going to help when your skin starts melting.
This happened in the '70s as well, as you may recall. Gas prices hit a spike and people sold all their big "look-the-fuck-at-me" muscle cars for something that wouldn't blow their paycheck on a tank of gas. The result was an increased interest in more fuel efficient vehicles, something that changed the industry forever, significantly helped the environment and made the japanese companies, smart enough to invest in what was undoubtedly the future of the auto industry, extremely wealthy.
The exact same thing, weather you realize it or not, is happening around us right now. Gas prices go up, American motor companies lose profits, the japanese, smart enough to invest in hybrid technology, are going to become extremely wealthy all over again. As gas goes up in price, people will realize their idiocy in purchasing giant, impractical cars and sell them, putting their money instead in vehicles that don't rely as heavily on a resource that is destroying the atmosphere as we speak.
I don't understand what people seem to be missing in this whole global warming thing. This isn't some grassy knoll conspiracy theory; this is a proven fact. It's getting warmer, glaciers are melting, snow peaked mountains are becoming bare, and we're all a little bit closer to the end of the human race.
And on another point entirely, hasn't anyone realized that gas prices really aren't that high? Okay, so you remember when you could fill your tank up for four fifty, but that was forty years ago. Gas prices rise like everything else in our inflated economy. And the oil companies aren't bull shitting you when they say most household products have risen more than petroleum. That's absolutely true. I don't understand why people think it's reasonable for apples, a renewing resource, to raise in price while gasoline, a quickly depleting fossil fuel that can only be retrieved by drilling miles into the earth's crust, absolutely must stay under a dollar a gallon.
So are heightened gas prices really a bad thing? Perhaps they need to be higher, if anything. Because we need to do whatever we can to show people that something has to be changed if you want your great grand children to reach retirement. Isn't it worth having a little less beer money at the end of the week to support something that is our only chance at saving the future of our species?
You may think i'm going a little over board with all this talk of global warming and alternative energies, but make no mistake, if the ozone layer dies, we all do. And no amount of money is going to help when your skin starts melting.