I care more about ingredients. Calorie counts are mostly useless to me. If you tell me something's first ingredient is corn syrup I'm going to assume it's high in calories, low in nutritional value and not good for me. With popcorn, I want to know if they are using real butter or something else. Because you know what, I want real butter damn it! Don't kill me slowly with poly unsaturated fats. The lipid hypothesis is slowly being shown to be false and saturated fats have long been demonized when they are now being found to be good for you (and conversely poly and mono unsaturated fats not so good). Google "French paradox" for starters.

+1 Thank you for some rational thought on this.

I read the article's summary and thought "Welcome to the nanny state".

Exactly the movie line that went through my head when I read the headline. Nicely done.

I worked for a few years with a Scottish woman who had not been in the States before. One of her comments was that she expected everyone to be driving huge, over-sized vehicles when she got here. She said she was a bit disappointed when everyone pretty much drove the same sized vehicles that she was used to.

I think your comments should be directed towards China and India. They are the ones rapidly increasing their consumption. The U.S. has been flat for some time.

Not at all. I am a believer in the Constitution and support the functions that the people have given the government power to perform. What the environmentalists and lefties in general believe is that the government has all power and does favors for us as individuals. They've got it backwards.

You didn't address my point (though I must admit it was a decent zinger). You stated that the onus is on the polluter to provide a good reason as to why they need to pollute. Environmentalists and the EPA have classified CO2 as a pollutant. Therefore, everyone must provide a good reason that they breath.

I suppose I'm being a bit pedantic, but your statement was just ludicrous and helped make the point of the original poster.

I'm confused. It's our duty to the international community to charge more for our gasoline? We're a sovereign nation. If we have any responsibility it is to our own citizens first.

I would add to that the US consumption has remained relatively flat for the last few years. Compare that with India or China.

"in practice, our government prefers to waste the money"

I would have written "any" government.

p.s. Spent almost 2 weeks in the Dortmund area a while back. I really enjoyed it. I have a "von" in my last name and everyone assumed I could speak the language, which unfortunately isn't the case.

There's a saying that goes like this, "The solution to high gas prices is high gas prices". In other words, people adjust behavior according to the price of a product/commodity.

The two problems with that in my mind are:
a) I can't help but believe the government (US) could be doing a much better job with our current energy resources (Keystone pipeline case in point).
b) The price of gas has ripple effects on housing which is already in the crapper. I.e. the price of housing further from a metropolitan area is inversely related to the price of gas.

I would love to be able to bike to work. My job location for the past 6 years is 21 miles from home. I could do it, but I don't have a shower in my building and I don't think my cube neighbors would appreciate the man-ass smell I probably have after a vigorous 21-mile bike.

I think the stereotypical overweight American applies primarily to lower incomes. I work amongst engineers and several of us ride bikes recreationally 1000+ miles a year. We have a a few different 100-mile events each year in the Minneapolis area and I've managed to complete one each of the last two years. The first year it was 50F and rainy. The second year it was 35F and windy with snow flurries.

Well said. I would have added that the OP should look up how much tax revenue the government rakes in vs the oil companies on a per-gallon basis. I'm pretty sure I know who gets more. It reminds me of a Reagan quote:

"Government's view of the economy can be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. If it stops moving, subsidize it."

Very cute. Forget the WSJ. Get it directly from the EPA [1]. Are they right-wing? I haven't checked lately.

My original point is that extreme environmentalists can label anything as harmful and thus restrict all human activity. It's borderline tyranny.

[1] http://epa.gov/climatechange/endangerment.html

"If you're going to advocate something environmentally harmful, you had damn well better have a pretty good answer on how we're going to live that way without destroying our ecosystem"

That's the thing. The extreme environmentalists are now claiming that CO2 is a pollutant [1] (nevermind that plants consume it while producing oxygen). That means the very act of breathing is now considered polluting the environment. So according to your statement I now have to have a damn good reason as to why I breath?

[1] http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124001537515830975.html