The link above is to Thomas Friedman's February 22, NY Times article. It is a good read and puts the Arab revolutions in perspective. These are some poor and oppressed people. Much of their oppression was funded and supported by our addiction to oil. This is a moral issue.
The reason buying pornography is wrong is not just because it is a bad habit but pornography oppresses women and is support for human trafficking. That is the tragedy of pornography. So too with oil. The dependence on oil and our dysfunctional relationship with Arab dictators is immoral. As a nation, we need to make tough decisions. This is a perfect example where we have to use our government to help us make decisions that we cannot make as consumers. This is a Christian issue. As Christians, we are citizens and voices for the oppressed of the world, especially oppressed people who are different than us. But this is not something that we can do as consumers. We cannot voluntarily boycott our way to lower oil consumption. Instead, we make a sober minded decision to levy good policy at the national level.
What the exact policy is, I am not sure. I imagine it has to do with taxes. We levy a sin tax on gasoline. We use the tax to fund a new green economy. The time is now to make the change. If we do not we will get rocked by high gas prices anyway. Really, we are a few decades late to the party. But better late than later.
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