Limbaugh Whining About CAFÉ Standards; Hey Rush, It’s an Economic Issue, Not an Environmental Issue

Why is it that the right has completely misunderstood the problem with their argument on big oil? Every time I hear someone try to propose conservation (am I the only one who sees irony in the fact that conservatives largely hate conservation?) of oil, you can count on Rush Limbaugh, Bob Lutz (of General Motors), energy companies (there’s a shock), scientists hired by energy companies, and FOX NEWS to immediately reply that global warming is a crock.
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/home/daily/site_022508/content/01125106.guest.html
They’ve completely missed the point. Global warming is a separate issue.

Why is it so hard for conservatives to understand this is a non-renewable resource? It took millions of years to create the planet’s petroleum reserves. We’ve run through probably over half of them in a century. That’s a long time relative to a human lifetime, but in the course of human history, it’s the blink of an eye.

Now, that doesn’t matter if you’re a bloated, fat cat millionaire like Limbaugh. It especially doesn’t matter if you’re in your fifties and have no kids. He figures to be off the planet before any, ‘oil apocalypse.’ He’s not affected in the least by rising gas prices.
The rest of us and our children will have to deal with the economic fallout of rising prices and diminishing supplies. Eventually, if we do not find other fuels, our standard of living will be shattered.

Should future generations live like cavemen while we wait to find new technologies? And why don’t we move our ass until we’re hip deep in shit? Or do conservatives live in a dream world where we’re going to magically find new, cheap and easily extracted oil? Or maybe, they don’t mind a world where only the privileged have cars?

Maybe I’m just bitter because I’m what some would call, ‘working poor,’ and $4-$5 a gallon gas (which will be here within a few months), greatly affects my standard of living. But, I know that Limbaugh and other selfish so called, ‘conservatives,’ don’t have any solution. George Bush’s response to a question on gas prices from David Gregory? Deflect.
Bush: “Is gas going to hit $4 a gallon?”
He never answered the question.

If you’ve read my posts, you know I believe in the free market, generally. I know big corporations are evil, but so aren’t we all. At least with the free market, we’re equally evil. The free market is the best system we have. But, that doesn’t mean it’s perfect, and there are times when government intervention is necessary.
We have to decide, do we want a world where only the very wealthy have cars, or do we want to accept change? If we continue to rely almost solely on oil, you can expect prices to rise. If prices rise at only 14% a year, and gas and oil have been rising faster, then in 15 years, when my son is 18, gas will be about $30 a gallon. Check my math if you don’t believe it.
You can follow the conservative blind faith in the market and just wait until you can no longer drive. Then you’ll just have to hope we find another fuel fast…or we can move on this now to prevent a lot of pain later.

Maybe taxing the daylights out of oil companies to fund an ethanol program isn’t the answer. But CAFÉ standards must rise, and alternative fuels must be found. It doesn’t have to be ethanol. There are alternatives galore. We need to stop listening to the, “junk science,” touted by oil companies. They have an interest in stifling competition (do you blame them?)
Switch-grass, solar, and my favorite, hydrogen, are all going to be tried out. Hydrogen is also non-renewable, but it’s far more abundant (and yes, cleaner) than oil.
We need to get away from this knee jerk resistance to change of any kind we have in this country. And for those who think oil has always been the answer, you should remember that the Model-T was originally designed to run on bio-fuels.

I know, I know, ‘necessity is the mother of invention,’ but do we really need to wait until there’s a crisis before accepting reality? Do we need to allow existing giants to quash competition before it can get off the ground, even if that competition is in the best long term economic interests of our country?