This Week’s Cartoon: “New Car Runs on Ignorance”

I was initially going to name the ignorance-powered car the Chevy Dolt, but then I Googled it to make sure it wasn’t an existing meme. As it turns out, a number of people opposed to electric cars and hybrids (and science in general) have christened the Volt the Dolt. I found some hilarious blog comments, such as this one:

Give me an old-fashioned car that runs on gas. I LIKE oil. Oil is good. Oil is the fuel of freedom. To hell with these stupid cars.

There’s also a persistent meme on the right that the battery for the Prius makes it less environmentally-friendly than a Hummer. Apparently some college student in Connecticut wrote an article for his school newspaper, it got picked up by Rush Limbaugh, and now it’s a golden nugget of contrarian wisdom, except that it isn’t true.

I learned yesterday to my chagrin that Tom Tomorrow did a similar cartoon in 2009, involving the harvesting of stupidity for power. But hey, in the internet age, that’s like two decades ago, right?

Another background tidbit: I drew this with a sprained thumb. It was literally a pain to ink. Can you tell? I went to the doctor yesterday, and it isn’t broken, thank goodness. Between my pulled back from a few weeks ago and my smashed thumb, I feel like a walking Three Stooges episode. I’m like all three stooges bundled into one.