Stick it to Putin long-term

First, the obvious: Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine makes him and his cronies warmongers. If you support, condone, or simply remain silent about his malign obliteration of a peaceful neighbor, you have blood on your hands.

Second, our appetite for fossil fuels allows not just Putin, but other authoritarians like Saudi Arabia's Mohammed bin Salman (you know, the guy who ordered the literal butchery of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi), to maintain their power. If you can't bring yourself to accept that fossil fuels are finite ("renewing" them takes millions of years), if you haven't wanted to see that fossil fuels are the primary contributor to anthropogenic climate change, then at least face the truth that our thirst for fossil fuels carries a price that includes literal spilled blood.

Our need for fossil fuels also is a national-security threat. If you have any desire to end Putin's and likeminded fossil-fuel-enabled autocrats' extortionate grip over the rest of the world, it's time to lend your support to the search for renewable, nonpolluting energy sources. It's time to tell your elected representatives that "business as usual" on the renewable-energy front is not acceptable, and that you will be holding their feet to the fire until they push hard to get us off fossil fuels.

No more hemming and hawing about how hard it will be. Don't you believe we're up to a challenge like this? Where's your national pride?

No more cavilling that we haven't figured out how to eliminate fossil fuel use everywhere. We haven't licked that because we haven't made figuring that out a national priority. Now is the time to prioritize that!

No more mealymouthed bullshit about saving jobs that are already endangered (I'm talking to you, Joe Manchin). If you truly care about the people whose jobs are endangered, Congresscritters, get off your asses and work out a transition plan for them. None of this "let the market decide" crap. The brutality of the free market, unmitigated by support for laid-off workers, is why we have millions who have lost faith not just in government, but in democracy. The brutality of the free market is why we have millions in the grip of Dick a l'orange: the millions who have disengaged from democracy have latched onto a would-be authoritarian to set their world right. (He won't, incidentally, because he's corrupt, totally indifferent to other people's suffering, and a moron.)

Stop living in the fantasy that life can go on as our grandparents lived it. Fossil fuels are finite and we goddamned well had better have an economy that doesn't depend on them before they run out.

It's a huge challenge, and the time to start was yesterday. Actually, the time to start was a half-century ago, but let's not rehash our stupidity and shortsightedness again.

Not one more goddamned day of dithering.

Not one more goddamned day of procrastinating.

Not one more goddamned day of pretending.

Focus on the hard, time-consuming, expensive, and disruptive work of getting us off of fossil fuels.

A real and sustained push to end our fossil-fuel dependence will do more to weaken Putin and fellow petro-autocrats in the long run than any number of sanctions.