Terror economics 101:Oil

Living as I do in a highly eco-twitchy, rabid granola-eater infested area, there are many, many bumperstickers and other literary devices exhorting the masses to use the bus, to bike, to live in cramped little shoebox apartments in dense, grimy urban environments like the Japanese do so that the new nobility (that would be the eco-oligarchs) might have vast unspoiled acreage to drive in their SUVs to and admire pristine nature. To give them credit, there are a significant number of folk who brave Seattle hills, drivers, and our famous liquid sunshine to bike to work. It can't be fun for them. It certainly isn't for me, stuck behind them.

A new variant on automotive guilt shows up now and then in the papers, especially of late. You see, we wouldn't need all that nasty war and fighting if we simply didn't use oil. That way, the allegedly evil terrorists wouldn't have our money, BushHitlerHaliburtonKittenKiller would have no need to coddle the Saudis for their oil, and we could go back to thinking up new reasons why growing hemp would solve everything.

Alas--even if we invented a new form of clean fusion energy that would power everything we could possibly want and the only byproduct would be a faint pleasant lemon scent, we would still have the problem of oil money financing terrorists. Because everybody ELSE on the planet would still want the oil. China in particular. We don't want foreign oil? Great, they'll take it. And pay money for it. Aaaaand ... we're right back where we started. Plus, there is the minor detail of replacing everything that uses oil right now with the Miracle Power Source, but that's something I've noted about the Whine-Grower's Union. They are very sparse with practical details. They must be conserving those too.