Time to get tough on gas guzzlers

By: Bonnie Erbe, Columnist for Scripps Howard News Service
..."Oil prices have doubled in the past 12 months, surging nearly $8 a barrel in the past four days (since Tuesday) alone...

Nonetheless, rising oil prices permeate the price of every consumer good imaginable making them more significant than other factors. We Americans have known since the oil crisis of the 1970s that we needed to reduce oil consumption.

We were warned again years ago as China and India ratcheted up oil usage. Rather than reacting by trimming back profligate oil usage here at home, we twiddled our thumbs, caved into business pressures to burn obscene amounts of energy and let the free-market types talk us into believing there would be no consequences.

Cheap oil is long gone and yet we still behave as if it were cheap and plentiful. Reform, massive reform, is needed and soon.

Gas tax policy must be revised to reward Americans driving fuel-efficient vehicles and take an "off with their heads" approach to profligate guzzlers..."


Dave responds:
If you can't afford the fuel to go boating, or drive an SUV, then get a better paying job. I work my fingers to the bone so I can give my family great memories of days on the lake in the boat. And I tow it with an Escalade. Drive your economy vehicle and wave at us from shore when we drive by in our boat. Live and let Live


Skiggley responds:
I think that Bonnie Erbe needs to be forced to driver her family along with luggage from New York to California in a 3-cylinder Geo Metro and force her to like it. She would like people to crush their Maseratis and force them into Hyundais or some other skittery little rattletrap buzzbomb. Sorry...I choose to drive the vehicle of my choice. If I want to drive around Nashua in a 1966 Buick Wildcat sedan, I will. If I want to own a 1987 Yugo, I will. No one else will make that choice for me.


Arnie responds:
Now you know why changing our love affair with the car is going to be wicked tough.

YOU read this week by host Arnie Arnesen