Why rising oil prices make me smile

4-dollar-gas-sign

editors-blog-entry3I’m not stupid. I get that higher oil prices are, generally speaking, not a good thing.

They could stall the slow economic recovery that’s underway in the U.S. And, on a personal level, they mean we’ll pay more to fuel our two gasoline cars (one of which we’ll be ditching for an EV as soon as Nissan LEAFs get to Colorado). Higher oil prices also mean I may never get our family over to Germany for vacation – a dream of mine — thanks to skyrocketing air travel costs.

In fact, higher oil prices mean higher prices for pretty much everything because, well, pretty much everything in our society is tied to oil.

I know all of this – and yet I can’t help myself: Every time I read about higher oil prices I break into a gleeful smile and a positively impish, giddy feeling sweeps over me.

Why?

Because it’s so damn clear that relying on a single fuel for nearly 100 percent of our transportation needs is just so incredibly dumb, dangerous, and self-destructive.

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The stupidity of oil addiction
And it just gets more stupid: Not only do we rely almost exclusively on oil to literally motor our society, but much of that oil comes from highly unstable countries thousands of miles away. And then there’s the whole military investment this foreign oil dependency scheme requires, as in hundreds of billions of dollars to ensure we get our fix.

Finally, there’s the pathetic “woe is us” tune. You know, the whole “Doesn’t it suck that just as our economy starts to get back to life events in the Middle East threaten to unravel it all?” spiel.

There’s almost no critical reflection, of course, practically no one saying: “Gee, if we weren’t so completely dependent on a single fuel for our transportation needs, then events in far-off places we can’t control but which we nonetheless spend hundreds of billions trying to control wouldn’t crash our entire economy.”

What would you rather do: Continue to swear at us “elitist” sons of bitches as we completely ditch gasoline by buying an EV and, if we can, power it with clean, local fuel produced by a home solar system, or join us and help us to break the world’s tiresome, unnecessary, dangerous and just plain stupid addiction to oil?

No, there’s nearly none of that. Just, again and again, the “woe is us” song coupled with the “we can’t change it” because there is no other “realistic” way other than massive consumption of oil claim.

A society blinded by oil
It’s as if there were no answer other than to run our entire society on a single, dirty fuel – oil.

Not true.

There are plenty of other answers, if only we could find the will to break from our simple-minded, one-track thinking and living.

Solar-charged driving is one of these answers.

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It’s the fact that, for now, apparently only I, and a comparatively small number of other folks out there, actually see this, that’s the biggest reason for the mischievous smile and giddiness that consumes me every single time I read about higher oil prices.

(OK, so there’s a little bit of “gotcha!”, “I told you so”, and we “deserve it” for being so short-sighted and dumb in my smile too).

Yeah, you might claim this makes me and the other anti-oil addiction folks out there, many of whom I know are also smiling as they watch gas prices go up, up, up, “elitist” sons of bitches.

But, I have to ask, what would you rather do: Continue to swear at us “elitist” SOBs as we completely ditch gasoline by buying an EV and, if we can, power it with clean, local fuel produced by a home solar system, or join us and help us to break the world’s tiresome, unnecessary, dangerous and just plain stupid addiction to oil?

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