Cyanide ranting: "Why should Americans have to lower our standards and live like the French? Because the French are so much better?"If we thought the French were so much better than ourselves, we would, I believe, be mistaken. The issue of this thread is not about that. The issue is the one set out by Homer in his initiating post. To write, as I did, that North Americans' lifestyle lacks grace in a world of (1) escalating oil prices as the world reaches a plateau, guessed to be final, in oil production and of (2) widespread environmental degradation is to challenge the presumption of our entitlement to live, in respect of these two factors, like our parents, who lived in a significantly different world in respect of these two factors -- and who, let it be remembered, saved much more than we are saving, and thus made available to us such infrastructure blessings as the Interstate Highway system.
It may be that technology will enable us to solve our oil shortage and environmental degradation problems. But it may not be. The risks are high of making fatal decisions in both these problematic fields. And on 9/11 the risks got noticeably higher, didn't they? How many lives and how much money are now being spent on curbing the terrorism that our graceless addiction to oil has contributed to spawning?
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