People usually give a lot of love to their children and grandchildren. They often make great sacrifices. But, the one love that trumps parental love is the love of the internal combustion engine.

We won’t even sacrifice power and size and drive small cars. In fact, we won’t even find a new way to get thrills: I read a while ago that there was going to be tractor races at the local track!

People, who love their progeny, are willing to put them at risk. How can that be?

I believe there are at least three reasons that people ignore global warming: lack of leadership, corporate power and the psychological defense mechanism called “denial.”

Congress, in the late 1970s, set the standard to 27 miles per gallon. In the early 1981 National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) advanced standards of 48 miles per gallon. The auto industry claimed it could get at least 30 miles per gallon by 1985.

We could have been reducing fuel consumption while searching for a viable alternative.

However, when President Reagan took power, he withdrew the NHTSA “notice” and set the standard at 26 miles per gallon. Sometimes we need help and direction from leadership but, it was not, and has not, come to be.

Secondly, corporate money finances advertising campaigns to plant confusion about global climate change when in reality there is scientific consensus. As one advertising executive put it: “Our product is ‘doubt’.”

These campaigns have had an effect. In fact, there was a letter in the Record-Bee alluding to snowfall and satirizing global warming and Al Gore. However, global warming can actually cause an increase in snowfall! (This is due to a complicated phenomenon that is related to the oceans warming.)

The third explanation of why we, like Nero, “fiddle while Rome burns,” is the issue of denial.

Remember the old quip, “denial is not a river in Egypt”? We hug our kids “goodbye” and hop into our SUVs and go to work, managing to avoid the unpleasant thought that we are living a lie. (And, by the way, if not for oil, would we be at war, trading blood for oil?)

So, let us face reality and do what we can to save our planet: drive high mileage cars, ride bicycles or walk whenever possible, and demand that our government invest in alternative energy instead of weaponry.

Nelson Strasser lives in Kelseyville, Calif.