Sad, but true. The vast majority care about one thing -- price. Unless the price can be kept up or unless we experience a major psychic, cultural, ethical change, we will see a return to the gas guzzlers.

Finally, someone else gets it. Putting more taxes on fossil fuels creates economic incentives to take fuel saving measures. Thus, by artificially raising the price via taxation, we encourage conservation.

There is no vast government program needed, no think tank, no great brain (or more likely hare brained) scheme needed. Just raise the cost. We can get rid of the idiocy of C.A.F.E., all the rest. Just jack up the cost. Simple, straightforward, easy. Of course we won't do it, there is no "stakeholders" (more government workers) involved with it.

Note that the Prius is not the creation of any government directive or program. It is a creation of the inventive hand of the free market, what some call capitalism.

I note that oil futures closed at 55 today, and yet another article appeared about Peak Oil.

More Morford:

"...the truth is, SUV sales are down not because people are becoming more politically aware and not necessarily because people are finally becoming more environmentally attuned and not because the population as a whole is finally realizing how BushCo has dragged us into a violent hellpit of screaming oily economy-gutted warmongering inarticulate debt. Wishful thinking, sweetheart.

And it's certainly not because everyone suddenly realized the oil-soaked Saudis are just as bad as the Taliban and we should be investigating alternative fuels and rediscovering the joys of riding bikes and walking to work, and while we're at it let's all examine our souls and examine our motives and examine just what the hell it is we in this country think we're doing by being the most gluttonous, environmentally devastating resource-abusin' landmass on the entire hobbled whirling sphere. All this is but a fraction of the explanation.

Nope, SUV sales are down for one reason and one reason only: high gas prices. SUV sales are down because when it costs upward of a hundred bucks to fill up your shiny clunky chrome-rimmed uber-bloated Escalade so you can burn donuts in the Wal-Mart parking lot for two hours on Friday night, dude, well, your sister's Dodge Neon suddenly looks like a worthy alternative. Even in Texas.

Optimism, this ain't. I wish I could say that the Prius-led revolution is at hand, that signs are increasingly resplendent of a massive war-weary cultural awakening, but of course I'm afraid the proof is just all too obvious that we just ain't all that nimble of spirit or that interesting a species and we just ain't that enlightened as a collective brain. Not yet, anyway..."