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Stuck on Empty

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Joel Pett is the Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist of the Lexington Herald-Leader. His work also appears in USA Today.

Cartoons about the high price of gas. Cartoons about U.S. dependence on foreign oil. Cartoons about the environmental effects of opening Alaska and the ocean to oil drilling. Where have we seen this stuff before?

Here’s a hint: People wore Earth shoes to Earth Day, and a global cartel gave the Carter administration a cardiac.

Most of these 30-year-old cartoons on gas lines, gas guzzlers, alternative energy, OPEC, Big Oil and their effects on the Big Blue Marble could be published today and nobody would know the difference, especially if you threw in a sneering Dick Cheney here and there.

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Most, but not all. Jim Lange’s lament about 70-cent gas leading to the return of the roller skate didn’t quite pan out. But, hey, none of us predicted the era of the Hummer in front of the McMansion. … What were we smoking?

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