Un-extinct dinosaurs to solve gas prices

I don’t know about you, sir or madam – but my car has turned into a pavement weight because I… I don’t know about you, sir or madam – but my car has turned into a pavement weight because I don’t want to drive it anywhere. I am tired of paying 40 bucks to fill up my 4-cylinder Honda Civic. I mean, honestly, I didn’t buy it because it was manly or stylish. I bought the damn thing because it’s good with gas. But nothing is good with gas at these prices.

Now listen closely, because I think I may have the solution to our energy problems: dinosaurs. If we could somehow un-extinct them, we would have a renewable energy source even the most curmudgeonly oil executive could back. I would imagine it would cost less to feed an allosaur than fill up your SUV. It just makes sense.

Don’t you think it would be stylish as hell to cruise down Fifth in your fresh-out-of-the-box triceratops? Imagine yourself running late to a class on your speedy little velociraptor – it would be like riding a non-lame version of a Vespa or a Segway. Wouldn’t it be great to never worry about your stereo getting jacked in South Oakland, because your car has teeth?

Before we digress too far into the ergonomic advantages of traveling on a dinosaur, just think about all the new jobs it would create. Car companies could take over the fledgling transposaurus industry and immediately save money in their design department. The beauty of it is, Mother Nature did all the research and development, so all the companies have to do is sell and resurrect them.

First, people would be hired to design the seating mechanism to be strapped to T. rex’s back, and then workers would be needed to assemble and install it. The great thing is that there will always be openings in the dino-plants, thanks to those inevitable accidents involving hungry dinosaurs and slow workers.

Dinosaurs are a source of energy not utilized since the days of Fred Flinstone and Bedrock. Dinosaurs were a part of our past. Don’t you think they should be a part of our future?

Of course, there are a few tiny problems. First, there’s no telling how long it would take before the sales of the transposaurus would pay off the great cost of resurrection, let alone turn a profit. Also, no one’s really sure if dinosaurs can be tamed enough to be standard human transports.

There are several ecological concerns that arise when discussing the mass reintroduction of giant lizards; the manure cleanup alone might be costly, as well as detrimental to the environment. Also, we can’t be sure how many and at what rate we could create the dinosaurs.

But that’s all liberal whining, I say.

I mean, take our president and his cohorts in Congress as examples. They want to explore and drill for oil in the Alaskan National Wildlife Reserve. Even exploration for oil would damage the reserve and the wildlife within it, yet they are not fazed.

No one is sure how much oil is in the ANWR, but everyone, even the Department of Energy, agrees that it can’t sustain American oil consumption for very long. So the irreparable damage to the environment might be for no gain. Yet Cheney is resolute. He wants to drill in Alaska, damn it.

So what I propose is that if Congress is seriously considering wasting money on a short-term-at-best energy plan, my dinosaur plan should get equal consideration. I mean, as long as we’re talking – by which I mean wasting time that could be spent developing renewable, alternative energy – about fantasies here, we might as well talk about riding dinosaurs and tricking them out with LCD displays in the head rests. Am I right?

Arun had a toy brontosaurus when he was little and was devastated to find out that brontosauri never existed. Console him at arunbutcher@gmail.com.