May 20th, I called in to propose that the ruptured oil well in the Gulf be used to advance reducing fossil fuel use. The reason for reducing fossil fuel use is to keep Earth suitable for human life. Humans are part of the current web of life. As E.O. Wilson said, "Man cannot not know happiness apart from nature."  Heating the planet by adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere faster than natural processes remove them is reducing the capacity of the planet to support life. Poisoning the Gulf with oil is an acute expression of the gradual poisoning of the atmosphere with CO2, methane, and other greenhouse gases.

How do we go about turning back from the precipice that we are accelerating toward, the precipice of ending life on Earth?   Dr. James Hansen, Director of NASA's Goddard Space Institute and professor of Climate Science at Columbia University, suggests rapidly phasing out all coal fired electric plants and reducing electric usage and replacing essential coal based electricity with electricity from other sources, such as "fast reactors" for which there is enough nuclear waste to last upwards to 1000 years. To phase out private cars and natural gas as well as put pressure on coal, he suggests a "carbon tax and dividend". The pickpockets at Goldman Sachs would not get one penney from his proposal nor would the American war machine or other government programs.  The tax would be collected  at the well head or point of entry. The tax would be added to the price of goods by the seller according to their carbon content. The government would redistribute to each citizen and legal resident the tax collected the previous month. His book has a short science fiction aside in which he posits that Earth will be a lifeless and waterless planet in less than 500 years at the rate we are going. Before rejecting what I have written here please read his book: Storms of My Grandchildren.

Bill McKibbin is another person who writes about keeping Earth habitable. His most recent book is titled: Eaarth. Three of his proposals are (1) to keep production of food and goods very local , (2)to greatly reduce the livestock population of the planet, and (3) to greatly reduce physical travel.

James Lovelock, a British scientist, in The Revenge of Gaia, also states that fossil fuel travel must stop and producing electricity by fossil fuel must also stop. All three thinkers write that Earth cannot sustain the current population and Lovelock posits that the human population may be less than one tenth its current level by the end of this century.

A fourth writer is Dr. Peter Ward, a professor of paleontology, biology and astrobiology at the University of Washington in Seattle. Three of his books that I have read that have helped me to understand humanities place in Earth's history are as follows: (1) Out of Thin Air, (2) Under a Green Sky, and (3) The Medea Hypothesis. Nature does not bargain. We shall endure or go extinct based on our ability to make the necessary changes. We should consider all things, including the price of gas in the context of how will it contribute to humans being on this planet for a thousand years rather than much less than 500 years.