What's wrong with us?

Let’s put all nonsense aside for the moment. The “war” against Iraq was not because of WMD’s, not because of terrorism, not because of wanting to spread democracy throughout the world. It was because of oil. The United States wants to control the oil in the Middle East and thereby also prevent the Chinese and Indians and others from having it. It is by now pretty much established that oil production has peaked and from now on will be going downhill. That is, less and less oil available no matter who wants it. Now that we know this you might think that instead of trying to steal the remaining oil we would try to figure out how to use less and less of it. This would mean either finding some other fuel for all the internal combustion engines on earth or find other means of transportation – such as buses or trains or whatever. It is apparent by now that no one in the United States is intelligent enough to have figured this out. We still have not come to grips with the simple fact that we should never have embraced the internal combustion engine and automobile transportation in the first place. We gave up trains for gigantic gas driven trucks and also for public transportation. It was a terrible mistake. Even now in Europe, although they still drive too many cars, there is perfectly adequate public transportation. There are trains and buses that run pretty much on time and reliably. Here in the U.S. we still need a ton of steel or so for each one of us to manage to even get to the store. Quite frankly, it’s disgusting.

What I find even more difficult to understand is why China and India and others are foolish enough to want to emulate this ridiculous, wasteful, and stupid behavior. They should know by now that the U.S. did something incredibly stupid and now has no public transportation to speak of, no way to live without millions of stupid gas guzzling machines that mostly lead us to perfectly mundane everyday shopping centers or to our work and hour or more away. With over a billion people in China why on earth would they want to compete for a dwindling supply of oil when they could easily come up with much better plans? India the same? It is as if they think the U.S. has something they are entitled to no matter how stupid and short-sighted it may be. Why should we be in competition with each other for a supply of something that is inevitably going to disappear when we could all be working out solutions that would make so much more sense? You want to know why? Because human beings are both greedy and stupid, to say nothing of short-sighted and ridiculous.

Even now, with our total dependence on oil, it would be entirely possible to reduce the amount of oil we have to have. Cars and trucks could get much better mileage than they do. The technology is readily available and has been for years. But of course the automobile manufacturers and the oil industry don’t want to have to change their ways. How awful it would be if people had to drive smaller, lighter vehicles. No, let’s just go on making them bigger and bigger and more inefficient year after year. Everyone, if they are anyone, ought to deserve a Hummer. Is this not the most ridiculous thing you ever heard of? Small cars are too dangerous as they might run into a Hummer or an SUV. But what if there were no Hummers and SUV’s? Wouldn’t the world be a better place? And what about ATV’s, snowmobiles and personal watercraft? No, don’t let me get started on that.
People are quite mad. It’s just that simple. And it doesn’t look like they will change until it is all over. So happy dreams.