EMAIL OF THE DAY

“As always, Andrew, you’ve done a great service in throwing a monkey-wrench into the common understanding of conservatives as necessarily haters of all things environmental by your admission that (horror of horrors!) you don’t drive and that you even advocate a gas tax as part of a solution to the massive budget deficits that show no sign of decreasing. One of the things that’s always surprised me about many supposed conservatives is their refusal to acknowledge what I’ve always believed in, and what strikes me as the essense of classical liberalism, i.e. personal responsibility, which applies to environmental concerns as well. Yes, it is your free choice to drive a Humvee, but with that freedom comes the responsibility to pay for the consequences of your choice: increased dependence on Middle-Eastern oil and increased air pollution. I do have a small car that I use for certain things that would be very difficult to accomplish otherwise, but I choose to live in a central part of my city so that I can ride my bike pretty much wherever I need to go in often less time than it would take to drive. The bicycle is, I’m all with you here, the ultimate form of transportation for us freedom lovers: complete reliance on oneself for getting the thing going, exercise while you go (instead of sitting in a car for hours and then paying to go to a gym to work off your laziness), no need for government registration and infinitely greater freedom in terms of where and when you can go. I don’t necessarily condone the deliberate flouting of traffic rules, but on a bicycle they certainly are a lot more flexible. Conservatives need to stop being hypocrites about this issue and be willing to pay the actual, non-subsidized cost of their gas-guzzling choices.” My feelings entirely. Conservatism should include conserving things, like the environment. Just because the enviro-left is loopy doesn’t mean that taking care of our environment is somehow a bad thing, or that animals don’t deserve better treatment from human beings, that what is now being done to the earth in China isn’t an appalling scandal, or that a higher tax on gas doesn’t make sense. More feedback on the Letters Page.