Tuesday, January 23, 2007

Tonight's State of the Union

CNN is reporting that:
President Bush, in Tuesday's State of the Union address, will propose a plan to cut U.S. gasoline consumption by 20 percent while bolstering inventory in the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, Republican sources say.

The president's 10-year plan to cut gasoline use includes tightening fuel economy standards on automakers and producing 35 billion gallons of renewable fuel such as ethanol by 2017, according to sources briefed on the speech.

One official said the moves would be equivalent to taking 26 million vehicles off U.S. roads.


Great, if they actually do it.
Sounds familiar, yes?

Dropping gasoline consumption by 27% for passenger cars would end all imports from the Persian Gulf--entirely removing our need for trillions in defense for our started wars in the region.

Of course, in mid-2001,
Cheney said telling Americans to do more with less is not enough. "Conservation may be a sign of personal virtue, but it is not a sufficient basis for a sound, comprehensive energy policy," he said.


Now, will they finally get CAFE standards to apply to light trucks and SUVs?
And can they avoid giving massive subsidies to companies that don't need them?
Or will they continue to push the hydrogen/fuel cell car, a technology poorly suited for mobile use?

Last year's comments.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hi Dean,

Yeah, you're right -- it's just the same old promises that they haven't come through on before. Plus, FactCheck.org put together a summary of the State of the Union, and they are saying that Bush's 20% drop is actually a 20% drop form the projected oil usage in 10 years. So it's only about an 11% drop from today... So it's even not that good, although some conservation would be better than none. Here's the article:

http://www.factcheck.org/article475.html

Take care,
John