This is totally backwards. Environmentalism isn't...

2008-07-26T18:45:00.000-04:00

This is totally backwards. Environmentalism isn't the cause of $4 gasoline. Come on, you know that. But $4 gasoline is a great excuse for pumping fear into people -- and fear, as you know, needs a scapegoat. Not surprisingly, the administration is trying to exploit this fear to knock down every environmental regulation, drill in the Arctic, etc. The reality is that this has nothing to do with $4 gas. These have been the wet dreams of the industry forever. Nor will these things bring one iota of relief to gas and oil prices, now or ever.

There's a wee bit more than a Jane Fonda movie behind people's skittishness about nuclear. Ever hear of Chernobyl? Three Mile Island? And then there's the pesky little problem of what to do with the radioactive waste. It's a problem with no solution. And then there's the expense. And then there's the wee little problem of terrorism, whether of a strike on a nuclear plant or nuclear materials falling into the wrong hands. So: Nuclear energy is fool's gold, plain and simple.

I could say the same about oil. What a perfect illustration that McCain had to forgo a visit to the Mississippi Delta at least in part because of a massive spill -- just one in a long line that includes Valdez and dozens of others.

$4 gas sucks, and $5 fuel oil is worse. I'm paying through the nose living in a poorly insulated New England home and having an hour one-way commute to work each day. But I'm not going to give in to my personal discomfort and fear by blessing environmental recklessness -- and I'm not a person of your means, by the way. The future of the environment for my children is not an abstraction, a cute cuddly Earth Ball -- it's the real world they will live in.

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This is totally backwards. Environmentalism isn't...