Iraq's Pres. Amadinejad Thanks You For Driving That Gas Sucking SUV

Iraq's deputy oil minister has now said it as clearly as it can be said. They believe the West's dependence on oil will limit our options in the use of sanctions to persuade them to halt their nuclear development:

Any action like that will increase oil prices very high. And I believe that the U.N. or its bodies will not put any sanctions on oil or the oil industry," M.H. Nejad Hosseinian told reporters after talks in Islamabad with Pakistani officials over a proposed pipeline to transport Iranian gas to Pakistan and India.

This is just further proof that in an increasingly dangerous world we in the West, but especially Americans, are harming our ability to take steps in our own self interest because of our insatiable consumption of oil. So far, higher gasoline prices have only produced a rage that will, to misquote Quentin Tarantino, smote with furious anger those that harm our ability to pig out as we choose. The most predictable outcome of current and future price hikes will be the political deaths of countless incumbents, who are all now engaged in a race to see who can best sell the American people a bill of goods that promises to secure the impossible dream of lower prices ASAP.

Perhaps what we need is a cultural turnaround. We should create bumper stickers and other forms of expression that begin to point out to Americans that their consumption habits have direct consequences. Thus I offer the headline of this post as a first suggestion for what I hope will be a growing wave of visible social disapproval that will hopefully drive some folks to make better choices about what they drive and how they drive. Any other suggestions would be welcome.

We all have to make changes and demand improvements, or they will never happen.