On Wed, 20 Mar 2002, James Heartfield wrote:
> Against the opinions polled for lower energy use and limits on car
> emissions one has to set the actions of American citizens. Like the
> citizens of countries all over the world, Americans increase there
> actual energy use, year on year.
>
I'll interject the crude Marxist insight here: individual energy consumption in the U.S. is not some personal preference; it is the inevitable outcome of a society based on capitalist production. To put it bluntly, corporations and wealthy shareholders economically benefit from increasing energy use; hence Cheney's trivialization of the idea of energy conservation.
Of course Americans use lots of energy; it's an integral aspect of our way of life! But we shouldn't treat this "SUV culture" as the product of uninformed or deluded individual choices. The energy consumption choices people in our society make are constrained by powerful economic interests. The fact that energy consumption in our society continues to grow--despite various ecological, practical, and economic incentives for people to use less power--is a testament to the indirect political influence of large corporations in our society. Once again, the pursuit of profit trumps rational use of resources. Ain't the free market grand?
Miles