- Radioactive Baby Seal Oil Part: 2

Thankfully, the moral preening of the political classes with regard to the environment has subsided. That's owing to the perennially high unemployment rate, and the catastrophic (and very public) failure of the government's top line green economic initiatives - all wracked up at very great expense to the US taxpayer, but I'll take what peace I can get.

But none of this has stopped NRO's Daniel Foster from conning GM into giving him a free rental car for a few days under the guise of writing a review the car - the infamous, and thoroughly subsidized Chevy Volt.

It's hysterical.

How did he manage this feat of deception and self interested malfeasance? I'll let him tell you:

At this point the question naturally arises: How did I, a lowly scrivener for a right-wing rag, possessed of neither the world-saving messianic impulse nor the liquidity to meet the Volt’s $41,000 MSRP, come to be in possession of this space-age automobile? The short answer is that I did what everybody in this country does when he needs to get something done: I called a lobbyist.

This after I had despaired of renting or otherwise temporarily acquiring a Volt through the usual channels, having gone so far as to join a large New York car-sharing service that boasted of its “green fleet,” only to find out after a series of tedious phone calls that the sole Volt in said fleet had been decommissioned after GM’s January 2012 recall of all 8,000 of its production vehicles.

We conservatives, particularly American conservatives, love cars. We love the independence they bring. They are the triumph of individual self interest given physical form. Liberals meanwhile want us all crammed onto carefully planned and environmentally friendly light rail systems. Screw them. And while we're at it, screw their environmental preening as well. It's only possible if everyone is rich, and they try so hard to keep people from being rich, that their idea of a 'green economy' was always doomed from the start.

Back in June of 2008 I tried to get in on the whole Green economy thing by selling some Carbon Credits on Ebay. What I discovered was that Ebay already knew that Carbon Credits were nothing but a scam. At the time I said this:

So what does all this say about America? Well here’s my take on it. The fact is, the global warming movement is counting on the idea that people will be willing to endure some level of suffering in order to be viewed as (and be able to describe themselves as) “moral” with regard to environment. But the fact is, the economic realities of that equation haven’t really been worked out. So long as it’s a small inconvenience, it might be true, but when we’re all cold and in the dark, many of us will be willing to burn radioactive baby seal oil to stay warm and to hell with the environment. Ebay may think its fine to make a statement to the press about being environmentally sensitive, but when they run the risk of a tarnished corporate image when people try to sell what is obviously a valueless commodity, they decide it’s just not worth the price.

After a few days of driving a volt, Daniel Foster ends up yearning for the warm glow of neutron emitting marine mammal flesh - proving my point. But at least he got to DC and back for free.