The following excerpt was taken from The Huffington Post.Click here to read the article in its entirety.

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Americans simply don’t do “national sacrifice” anymore. During World War II, Americans were asked to ration everything from sugar to oil to cheese — even shoes. Those days are long gone. Today, we’re asked to go to Disneyland or the beach. Or we’re asked to pray. (It’s difficult to imagine the modern right-wing, for example, accepting the rationing of anything at the behest of the current president when most of them refuse to fill out a U.S. Census form. More on that presently.)

The BP oil spill has been a daily reminder of our toxic relationship with decomposed dinosaurs. On just about every blog and every cable news show, we’ve watched in shock-horror as 75,000,000 gallons of oil spew from the top of the Deepwater Horizon’s blowout preventer. We see it. We cringe. Some of us shout, “Why, oh, why?!” Others curse Tony Hayward and BP. Maybe some of us curse President Obama or former President Bush. A clear majority of Americans are pissed off, and they’re taking it out on everyone except themselves: the ones actually buying the oil.

Once we’re exhausted with blaming and yelling, we climb into our oversized cars, crank up the air conditioner, drive to Burger King and order a ammonia-washed beef sandwich the size of a baby — while mindlessly idling at the drive-thru.

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We know what we have to do. All of us. But we only really make these kinds of sacrifices when we have no other choice.

For most of us, our share of energy is burned as matter of lifestyle and habit. We might turn off an extra light or two, or slowly switch to CFL bulbs, but making sacrifices big enough to smash a dent in the volume of fossil fuels we burn and the carbon footprint we leave seems almost unheard of. Especially because Americans have been conditioned to participate in the consumer economy. Not only are politicians disinclined to demand less spending on burgers and cars due to the consequential negative economic impact, but the money spilling into their campaigns from the various Big Consumer corporations won’t permit any such call to sacrifice that which Big Consumer corporations are selling.

President Obama wouldn’t dare suggest we eat less beef or buy fewer cars. And definitely not when we’re beginning to recover from an enormous recession. If we were to actually pay attention to a presidential call to personally scale back our energy habits, the abrupt change in consumer spending could create a backslide in economic recovery and, thus, the president’s shot at reelection would be jeopardized, not to mention the reelection chances of any member of Congress who rides along.

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