Virtue, Vice and Conservation

Re “Low-MPG Energy Policy,” editorial, May 20: So Vice President Dick Cheney thinks conservation is little more than “a possible sign of personal virtue.” Hmm. Isn’t personal virtue a good thing? If it is, then conserving would be a good thing. And if conserving is a good thing, then it follows that not conserving is a bad thing. If not conserving is a bad thing, then a person who doesn’t conserve is not a virtuous person. Therefore (as if we needed this argument to tell us), Cheney is not a virtuous man. The amazing thing is that he seems to be proud of it.

Leslie Hicks

Los Angeles

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Might I equate our sky-high gasoline prices with blackmail of “my fellow Americans” to pressure Congress to pass President Bush and the oil corporations’ energy bill? Duh! No doubt at all in my mind that the timing and rise were artificially created with corporate well-being in mind. The only good thing -- maybe this will cause us little guys to conserve. Bravo for your editorial. By the way, there’s also no doubt in my mind that this Iraq horror was fueled by our national gluttony and corporate desires to control the world’s oil. It’s so difficult to think that our current leadership would put its moral desire to spread “good” above the good of corporations.

Ann Marshall

Palm Desert

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With gasoline prices soaring, wouldn’t now be a really good time to launch a massive governmental project to discover alternative sources of energy?

If we really are engaged in a war on terror, one of the best ways to fight it is to weaken the economic sources that feed the terrorists.

A modern Manhattan Project to develop economically competitive energy options would enlist the technological talent of the nation to do just that -- to say nothing of the positive side effects, such as the benefit to the environment and the creation of new industries.

Jim Stein

Redondo Beach