It may not be the most popular idea to put forward, but could it be that the current rapid rise in oil prices is actually good for us? The response from many of the sectors involved is predictable. The road hauliers want a rebate in excise duty paid on fuel. They have issued veiled threats that they may blockade ports unless the Government assists them.
The Automobile Association, self-styled champion of poor, beleaguered motorists, has called for a reduction in tax on petrol. The Irish Farmers' Association is also looking for a commitment from the Government to reduce tax on farm diesel.
What is singularly absent from all the sound and fury about spiralling oil prices is the suggestion that we might respond by reducing our consumption. We know we need to do this anyway in order to slow the rate of global warming, the greatest cause of which is the carbon dioxide emitted by burning fossil fuels. We also know (if we are being honest) that we are in a profound state of denial about the need to fundamentally alter our way of living. If we won't change in the interests of the planet's future, perhaps galloping oil price inflation might make us see sense.
Denial of the appalling reality of climate change is everywhere. In Ireland, it was most evident in the Government's rejection last year of its own plans to introduce a carbon tax. In the US, responsible for one quarter of all the world's carbon emissions, it can be seen in the reluctance to accept that the planet's problems are man-made, and that the solution consequently lies with us alone. That this blindness was orchestrated from within the US administration became apparent earlier this year with the revelation that officials had carefully doctored scientific reports to remove the evidence of the human causes of global warming.
The resulting embarrassment has made George Bush grudgingly accept that human activity does play a part in climate change, but the lack of progress on the issue at the recent G8 summit in Scotland clearly indicates a refusal of the world's largest consumer and most destructive polluter to engage with the need to reduce oil consumption and control carbon emissions.
Some hope, however, may lie in the fact that public opinion in the US is changing. A recent Program on International Policy Attitudes poll revealed that 94 per cent of Americans believe that the US should join the international community in cutting carbon emissions. (At present the US has refused to be bound by the Kyoto Protocol, under which most of the world's countries have agreed to reduce their greenhouse gases.)
While European rhetoric may be more honest about the problem, our actions on this side of the Atlantic remain paltry in the face of what is required. The emissions trading system, whereby an overall limit on carbon emission is set for industry with larger polluters buying unused quotas from cleaner operations, has been criticised for being inadequate.
A recent study from the Hadley Centre in the UK has shown that any delay in radically reducing our fuel consumption will only increase the burden on all of us in the long term. Continuing as we are for even the next 20 years will mean that carbon emissions will at that stage have to be reduced up to seven-fold in order to produce the same effect on climate had we acted now.
All of that, of course, is on the level of global politics, making denial of reality that much easier for us as individuals. There is, however, a personal responsibility that each one of us has to the safety of the planet. Are we prepared to give up driving SUVs, significant contributors to global warming, around our cities?
And what about cheap air fares, and those frequent flights made to the holiday home abroad now owned by an increasing number of Irish people? Carbon dioxide emissions from aircraft are one of the worst culprits in causing global warming, which makes it almost criminal that aircraft fuel is not subject to tax within the EU, thus allowing fares to remain low even in the face of oil price increases. Just bear in mind that for the shopping day-trip to New York which we're told so many Irish people now like to take, you as an individual will be directly responsible for spewing 2.6 tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
Explain that one to the grandchildren when they ask why we did nothing while the planet burned.
There can be few more immoral actions than the conscious act of maintaining our own levels of comfort or even luxury at the expense of the security of not just nebulous generations far into the future, but of our own children and grandchildren. The climate is now changing at such a rate that it is they who will bear the brunt of our selfish abandon.
Rather than complaining and looking for handouts, we should embrace the current increase in oil prices as an opportunity to force us to change our destructive and profligate ways.