b. traven
The vampires attack mother earth and Bill Astore is on the case. Professor Astore usually writes about military subjects with his background in the Air Force as a Lt. Colonel. In an article just published in Huffington Post, Astore examines how the vampires are sucking the blood from mother earth so that we can continue to guzzle gas (even at $4 a gallon).
This overweening thirst we have for oil continues to drive our never ending wars and our increasingly bellicose competition with the Chinese for that same commodity. The results include the almost complete alienation of the Muslim world’s citizens (though not their leaders), the deterioration of not only our economy and our democracy, but the earth itself, just to sustain that bloody thirst we have.
It appears that Mr. Obama agrees with Mr. Bush that the vampires need to be fed. Let us rid ourselves of the vampires and let the sun, wind, waves, and chemistry feed our thirst.
The Contrary Perspective 
I don’t think it is so much that each one of us is using all that much gasoline but the simple fact that humanity (except for China and their 1 child per couple policy) ignores the cause: global over population.This elephant in the rooms desperately needs to be discussed by all governments.
Petra: Yes, You are right . I merely used the gasoline guzzling as a metaphor to bring it to the more personal level. Perpetual growth and industrialization rather than sustainability is the basic problem which all politicians throughout the world refuse to deal with. b. traven
Yes, of course, overpopulation is a huge, huge issue. But even if we could “freeze” population at present level, fact remains that the planet has crossed a line: the effects of global climate chaos will continue to snowball going forward. That’s what the best scientific minds warned us of years ago, that “inconvenient truth.”
Overpopulation is certainly something that needs addressing, but I do not agree that we are not using that much gasoline. We are consuming oil at a staggering rate and ignoring the fact that this is a resource of finite availability.
There continues to be extensive discussion and research on peak oil, but one thing is for sure, if this watershed has not already been reached, it is not far away. In the meanwhile, global consumption considers to increase. (Ref peak-oil.org, indexmundi.com).
The consumption Earth’s resources (not just oil) is not evenly distributed across global societies, “on average, an inhabitant of North America consumes around 90 kilograms (kg) of resources each day. In Europe, consumption is around 45 kg per day, while in Africa people consume only around 10 kg per day.” Source Sustainable Europe Research Institute.
It is ironic that the biggest consumers of oil are also those best placed to find alternative sources of energy. The technology exists to free us from depending on oil. It is the will to shake off the ties to the oil companies that is holding us back.
re: Mr. Astore’s column (at HuffPo)–“Consume and deny” is a very good phrase. The morons who say Obama was born in Kenya are also the loudest deniers of global climate chaos (my preferred phrase), but it’s not restricted to them, of course. “Big Oil can’t make money if all the customers are dead.” This is true, but it’s precisely greed that absolutely blinds capitalists to long-term disastrous outcomes of their activities (including bringing about their own downfall, per Marx!). I’ve been saying for a long time that the chaos will snowball more rapidly than even the most pessimistic “official” scientists have predicted. There is absolutely NO “easy solution” to this mess. With the Fed. government in the deathgrip of GOP, there’s no way to institute drastic policies to curb fossil fuel consumption. It literally would require martial law to do so. And do we really have a right to tell the aspiring new consumers in China and India that they won’t be allowed to emulate the lifestyles (more like deathstyles, really) of Americans, e.g. at least two SUVs on every driveway?!? Mother Nature WILL resolve all this in due time, but humans won’t enjoy the outcome…