Drive OPEC nuts! Drive Big Oil nuts! Drive Hugo Chavez nuts!

By Si Dunn

According to a recent Christian Science Monitor opinion column, the "patriotic answer" to $4-a-gallon gas is: "Drive less, and slow down."

That simple strategy worked during World War II, when gasoline was rationed and speed limits were lowered. And it worked during the panic-driven 1979 energy crisis, when gasoline again had to be rationed and speed limits had to be lowered to bring demand back into balance with supply.

It isn't rocket science to suggest that making heavier use of the Internet, email and telephones also can help conserve gasoline. More people working from home at least one day a week will lower gasoline consumption and also ease gasoline-wasting traffic jams. Furthermore, having a workforce able to continue business away from the office is a good survival strategy for companies suddenly hit by a disaster, such as an earthquake or fire. Californians have demonstrated the success of this strategy over and over in recent few decades.

The next President of the United States (and it would have to be Obama, not McCain) will need to give Americans a patriotic challenge: Slow down, drive less, and use every technical and common-sense means at your disposal to help push down our nation's thirst for oil. Our nation needs your help.

Congress may have to have the courage to impose some restrictions on highway speeds or higher taxes on gasoline sales (and use the money to fund mass-transit improvements).

American automakers may have to move economical vehicle designs off their back shelves and into showrooms at breakneck speed.

Motorcycles, motorscooters and bicycles may become even more trendy and numerous on the roads.

Perhaps civilian Hummers and oversized SUVs can be donated to the military in return for a tax break and refurbished for combat or for duty as live-fire training targets for pilots, drone operators and artillery crews. We aren't likely to see many solar-powered Hummers festooned with peace symbols and flower-power slogans buzzing down the road.

Speculators and oil executives aside, gasoline prices mainly are a matter of supply and demand. The less we demand, the more supply will remain in the pipeline. And prices will drop.

It should become both patriotic and socially trendy to use mass transit and to shop closer to home and to work closer to home or at home. We also should recall how to walk or ride a bicycle or hitch a ride from friendly neighbors when making short trips.

Neighbors may need to step away from their big-screen TVs long enough to get to know each other and work out schedules for carpooling to shopping centers or grocery stores.

More goods can be ordered online, even from local companies, and carried to you via the U.S. Postal Service, which already is delivering in your neighborhood. Local businesses may have to hire more bicycle delivery riders. You may have to walk a half mile to your next haircut and actually get some beneficial exercise.

The basic goal should be to "Drive OPEC Nuts! Drive Big Oil Nuts! Drive Hugo Chavez Nuts!" by driving less and spending less on gasoline. And this new lifestyle should become a permanent fixture in American culture, even as gasoline supplies once again rise and new energy alternatives such as wind power, solar power and hydrogen power increasingly come on line.

Drive OPEC nuts. Drive Big Oil nuts. Drive Hugo Chavez nuts. We know exactly how to do this, if we will just have the courage of our conniptions. We are rebels and innovators at heart. Instead of Don't Tread on Me, we can fly flags that proclaim Gasoline??? We don't need no stinkin' gasoline! and Let them eat oil!

If we do this, we won't be driving tanks, Hummers, mine-resistant behemoths, and thousands of our young men and young women into any more trillion-dollar battles for sand and Middle Eastern oil.

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