The Japanese cashier at Peas and Pickles in Brooklyn asks me if I need a bag. 

I say, "What do you think -- I plan to juggle my sushi, Gatorade and miso soup? Of course I need a bag."

"If you care about the environment you won't use a plastic bag," he says.

"You can care if you want," I say. "But I don't. You think you're going to change the world?"

"A long distance is walked by small footsteps," he says.

Sounds very Zen to me.  I answer, "Small footsteps  go in reverse and hurt people behind us."

I am so sick of people talking about helping the environment when they haven't invented anything to replace fossil fuels. They talk about a chimera.  There isn't a ghost of chance that they will improve anything.  They are at a standstill while they brag that they can change the world.  Windmills, solar energy, electric cars are all a joke that bankrupt our country.  Al Gore and the environmental clowns are making a fortune by suckering us into unworkable energy schemes. When they invent a real alternative energy they should let us know. Until then the environmentalists should live in their own fantasies.

"I like that line about small footsteps go in reverse," the cashier says. I nod.  It was pretty good.

"Will you give up your naïve environmentalism?"  I ask.

"No."

It's embarrassing to have a President who is OK with hiking the price of gas in order to discourage using it.  He has put billions into his pet projects like Solyndra.  He has discouraged coal and nuclear energy. He is a real environmental fanatic.  He is radical.  He is bankrupting our country by showing passion instead of pragmatism. 

A president is supposed to weigh the dangers of a product against its expediency and find a delicate balance.  Obama panics like a high school sophomore and follows in the light of that dull bulb-Al Gore. 

Good old "C" student Gore and hide-your-transcript Obama should form a naive club.  Two whiz kids. Two extremists who speak radically on a subject they know next to nothing about, neither being a climatologist, and injure our economy while they try to do imaginary good.

As I walk out of Peas and Pickles I pass a poodle, hold up my goodies in my plastic bag and say, "This plastic bag is better than spilling my Miso soup on this dog."

The dog barks as if in support.  I pat its head.  When I go out the door two kids ask me if I'd like to give money to protecting the environment.

"Go inside and ask the cashier.  He likes to support clichés," I say.  "Like Obama's 'Hope and change.'"