Put Your Money Where Your Green Mouth Is

As our regular readers know, Stop Breathing Now!!! is no fan of the green movement. Their ideas, while a step in the right direction, stop far short of meaningful change. We have continually stressed that reducing carbon output has much less meaningful change than stopping it all together. Yet our most noble efforts to convince people to Go Blue! have fallen far short of the levels we have hoped for. That is why I, Al Bore, am now appealing to President Barack Obama and the Green Movement to initiate some meaningful change that will help people who are unwilling to Stop Breathing Now!!! to reduce their carbon footprint drastically.

The push to get people to drive smaller cars has fallen short for one simple reason. It doesn't matter how fuel efficient you make a car, this weekly savings isn't going to be enough to convince some people to drive them. These people are concerned with safety. They are following Newton's Laws of Physics, and no amount of money is going to convince them otherwise. They are aware of Newton's Law of Motion which dictates that when rigid objects of different weights collide, the velocity change of the lighter object will always exceed that of the heavier object, in proportion to their relative weights. 

What does this mean to the average American? If one car is double the weight of the other and they collide at a closing speed of 60 MPH, the heavier car will experience a velocity change of 20 MPH, while the lighter car will experience a velocity change of 40 MPH. Moreover, studies have shown that the risk of death in a collision increases polynomially as a function of velocity change taken to the fourth power. A two-fold increase in velocity, in other words, multiplies the risk of death by 2 to the 4th power, which means that passengers in the lighter vehicle are 16 times as likely to die as passengers in the heavier car.

Some humans place a high value on their life. I submit that a man or woman who is willing to pay $1,000 a month for health insurance is probably not going to be willing to increase their chances of dying 16 times just to save $20 a week in gas. Knowing this,it is easy for one to see why I have been critical of the green movement. However, I feel now that it is time to set aside our differences and work together to solve this problem.

Barack Obama want's to drive our fuel prices through the roof. We applaud this effort. While we are well aware that it is unlikely that people conserving energy and driving less or lowering their thermostat will make any significant difference, we are also aware that some people will be altogether unable to afford their heating bills and their power will get shut off. At this point, it is only a matter of time until it gets a little too cold and some people (especially children and the elderly) will do the right thing and Stop Breathing Now!!! But still, cost hikes alone will not do enough to stop global warming.

 Hence, it is incumbent on the current administration to use the power that has been given to them to make meaningful change. Mr. President and Speaker Pelosi, you have an overwhelming majority right now. You have control of both the Legislative and Executive branches. You have free reign to legislate change. But sometimes, more is less. I ask you not to make a new law, but to repeal an old one. I implore you to use your power to repeal Newton's Law of Motion. It is only fair that a small car have an equal chance of surviving  wreck. Once this law is repealed, a new law should be drawn up and enacted that disburses the velocity in a collision based not on weight, but on MPG. The new law should read something like this.

   When rigid objects of different weights collide, the velocity change of the less fuel efficient object will always exceed that of the hybrid object.

As you can guess, this new law would turn the table and virtually force these safety conscious consumers into the smaller cars. Although stopping far short of our goal of getting polluters to Go Blue! and Stop Breathing Now!!!, it would greatly reduce the carbon footprint of many current SUV drivers. It is my sincerest hope that President Obama would treat the laws of physics like he does the laws of our Nation, and totally disregard them for the sake of the common good.