On the list as our No. 1 request from Santa this year is that he use his considerable heft to stamp out willful ignorance.
Although the Internet has flooded the world with access to information about everything from atoms to zebras, we Americans seem to have developed an impenetrable resistance to knowledge, an unshakable sense of entitlement and a tendency toward delusional thinking. Unchecked, the combination could lead to disaster.
For example, although we have become painfully aware that the cars and trucks we drive are powered by oil produced by countries populated by people who hate us, our car companies have done nothing to steer customers toward gas sippers instead of gas guzzlers.
And Americans are complicit. When gas prices spiked last summer, sales of gas-hog SUVs dropped steeply, and it looked like Americans had learned a lesson. Yet now that gas prices are lower again, SUV sales have rebounded.
The evidence is also in that burning fossil fuels contributes to pollution and climate change. Yet last week, the Environmental Protection Agency joined the parade of lemmings headed off the cliff of willful ignorance when it decided not to require new coal-fired power plants to limit emissions of carbon dioxide because it claims the gas is not a pollutant.
When it comes to resources, Americans behave like addicts who insist until they die that alcohol, drugs or cigarettes will not harm their health.
The evidence of willful ignorance is not confined to oil. Other examples abound.
For 30 years, enabled by leaders in government and finance, Americans acted as though home prices and returns from the stock market would always go up and never go down. We believed that too-good-to-be-true mortgage deals were true and that 12 percent annual dividends were our right.
We eat junk food, don't exercise and wonder why our health-care system is sinking from high costs.
As long as water is coming out of the tap, we don't worry nor do we plan to prevent the day that it doesn't.
We believe that converting to alternative fuels or electric cars will take care of the nation's problems without considering where all that new electricity will come from or what the negative consequences—constriction of the world food supply, radioactive waste from nuclear power plants—will be.
What we need, Dear Santa, is a world in which people act intelligently, refuse to follow charlatans blindly, and return to the very American belief that one person can make a difference.
