While some are bemoaning record-breaking oil and gasoline prices, Bush administration officials are smiling. “Our market based approach for solving our nation’s problems is clearly working,” said one. “Without increasing taxes or creating a vast bureaucracy we have reduced green house gas emissions, decreased highway fatalities, increased the time that Americans spend with their families, eliminated major sources of air-pollution, reduced the environmental impact of visitors to our national park system, decreased the cost of maintaining our Interstate highway system, relieved overcrowded airports, reduced obesity, and encouraged more young men and women to join our nation’s military.”
Insiders also credit the program with making renewable energy sources—including solar, wind, and geothermal—more attractive, and with encouraging Americans to make lifestyle changes—such as freezing and starving—that will reduce the amount of oil they use.
As gasoline moves steadily toward the administration’s initial target price, $15 a gallon, analysts expect to see large numbers of gas guzzling SUVs replaced by a smaller number of fuel-efficient compact hybrids; to see large energy-wasting resource-consuming McMansions abandoned in favor of small, energy-efficient, recycled cardboard boxes; and to see millions of fat, lethargic Americans turned into lean, agile participants in an increasingly green and global economy.
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