Look, if you want to put the environment before human development, then stop whining about the price of gasoline in Hawaii. Haven’t you heard that global warming is killing the planet? You think you have the right to drive to work through floods caused by global warming? Your driving to work caused them in the first place.

State Sen. Ron Menor, D-Mililani, finally acquiesced and agreed to allow the repeal of the gas cap. But what was he thinking in the first place? Isn’t the use of gasoline the evil cause of global warming? So why is he trying to hold the cost down so we can use more? Doesn’t he realize how irresponsible this is?

In California that phony Republican Arnold Shwarzenagger (and few things pain me more – as a long time weightlifter following Arnold’s career has been a thing of joy) is now calling for an increase in gas taxes to reduce the amount of gasoline use to lessen “global warming.” Yet here we are trying to promote it by holding down gas prices. Can we all get on the same page?  

Yes, I am being facetious. But this whole raft of nonsense is beginning to get to me. You cannot complain about the price of gasoline to get to work while complaining that YOUR usage of it is causing global warming. So quit your job, stop using modern conveniences and condemn your family to homelessness. Go live in tents in Mokuleia. We can all live in tents on the North Shore in Mokuleia, right?

You might well ask what prompted this diatribe. It was yet another story about global warming, on the Drudge report. Not only is global warming not proven, there isn’t anything we can do about it. Which is my point. Are you willing to give up your car? Your air conditioner? Your refrigerator? Your hot water heater?  

In other words, you want to go back to living like animals? The problem with the environmental movement is that its supporters all think it applies to somebody else but them. Does the head of the Sierra club walk the thousand miles or so from wherever he or she lives to Washington D.C. when it comes time to testify about some issue? No, that person flies on an airplane, or drives in a car.

Every person who lives in this world today contributes to the problem in some way. To say that other people should “live differently” is the height of hypocrisy. That is what tyrants always say; and then, they have the answer. You get less freedom. Less gasoline, smaller houses, public transportation, ethanol and government controlling everything you do from the time you get up in the morning until you tuck yourself in at night.

Those are the only real choices, freedom or tyranny.

And the truth is, capitalism and freedom are the only concepts that have ever advanced humanity at all. Not telling people what they “can’t” do, but that they can do anything they dream. All the solutions for our future problems are in what we dream. And dreams are made up of what we can do, not what the government tells us we can’t do.

Don Newman, senior policy analyst for the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii