Time for fuel standards

Legislation is coming out of the House Energy and Commerce Committee that will require all automobiles made in the US after 2020 to achieve at least 35 miles-per-gallon. The bill is under threat of veto from President Bush because it also requires energy companies to produce 15% of its electricity from renewable resources and cuts tax breaks for big oil.

Many view fuel standards through the spectrum of ‘global warming’ - increasing mpg to decrease carbon emission. While fuel standards definitely address carbon emission, we shouldn’t forget that parallel to this is the issue of oil consumption.

With no room to debate, oil consumption is the greatest threat to the US today. We are beholden to the Middle East because of it, and as such, our nefarious involvement there will never relax until we cut our insatiable appetite for their oil. You want to stop Islamic terrorism? Stop funding totalitarian, brutal, and repressive regimes in the Middle East by buying so much oil.

Waning ourselves off of their supply starts with using our oil more efficiently - through fuel standards, for example. Big-rigs and superfluous SUVs are exacerbating our consumption and therefore our immersion in the oil producing world. Our long-term presence in the Middle East is contingent on how much of their oil we need. That’s why fuel standards are necessary - and required - to get us out of the desert.

This is a step in actually addressing - instead of attacking - the roots of terrorism. Given this significance, President Bush cannot be allowed to allay this measure.

While I agree completely with your statements, I think a dangerous problem that still remains is how deeply entrenched the use of the personal automobile is in American culture. The repercussions of a diminishing oil supply will be felt widely, and unless we can curb our use of it for mass individual transportation, other important facets of our civilization will suffer. Although this is a necessary and very productive first step (assuming Bush does not once again hinder American progress), we must look beyond the big picture and realize that our consumption for transportation is borderline religious.
I speak as a Californian, where private automobile use is the worst in the world. Even if all automobiles were to halve their MPG, we are still facing a limited and nonrenewable resource whose only application is not power.
I worry for medicine, the construction industry and the military, though anything that uses plastics and rubbers will suffer. Although we are finding alternatives to petroleum for the manufacture of plastic and rubber, we face a resource that is running out; which implies that if we continue to consume it WILL run out.
We have built our entire culture in the last 100 years on the remains of forests.. we are drinking Earth’s lifeblood and paying it back with harmful emissions. Americans are not prepared to wait an extra thirty minutes on a train or trolley, so it seems unlikely they are willing to wait the millennia necessary for South America or parts of Asia to be compacted from plant and animal life into fuel; fuel that will also be the plastic bags we get at a grocery store or IV bags for wounded soldiers.

Brian,
Interesting post. I appreciate your art of brevity and I’ll try to keep up in that regard.

Let me say up front that I have been practicing a “green” lifestyle even before society had it’s collective epiphany about global warming. Only they just called me “cheap and old fashioned”.

I’ll try to break it down this way:

Our use of oil does in fact contribute to the problem of terrorism emanating from the Middle East by supplying money to the culprits. However, the policy makers in the legislature continue to link the elemental issues in appropriately. The fuel standards bill should be split into two separate bills. One for cars and trucks and the other for electricity. They know this but prefer to gain some convenient headlines in an election cycle. “Bush Veto’s Planet Saving Legislation”. “Poison Pill” legislation which demands a veto is not a new strategy and I forecast a lot more of it in the upcoming year.

As for the efficacy of simply using less oil to stem the economic platform for terrorist can by definition only be partially successful. - that approach ignores the inherent adjustability of world economics. More simply said, they will just adjust the unit price upward to make up for the lack of volume. And if we continue to insist on a single supply (Middle Eastern), there is no way to stop them. The obvious way to deal with this facet of the problem is to increase the US / Western oil supply until oil is no longer a dominant commodity. (Yikes ! I can see the rebuttal keystrokes flying. )

One might reasonably say, “What about the planet?”.
I say, it’s a matter of sequencing. In fact, everything is a matter of sequencing. Reducing emissions, in any meaningful way, will be expensive. It will require prosperity. Prosperity requires peace. Peace requires your well stated reduction of Middle East economic power.

Allow me a over simplified analogy. If one decides to get healthier by losing a hundred pounds by a month certain, we can do a calculation that concludes we need to stop eating for 45 days. The results are predictable.

If I were President, I would veto the Fuel Standards bill as currently offered.

Gregorian - The problem is not as much the car as is it is what it takes to power the car. Our urban structure is what it is, our economy requires the car to run. My issue is with how we power our cars with a fickle commodity, and the reality that we are economically and strategically vulnerable because of it.

Your sentiment is right on though. We should really reexamine our suburban structure, which requires more fuel than its urban counterpart. Should we continue to build sprawling, limitless suburbs? No. That’s one way to curb the car culture.

Chuck - I agree with your argument but not your conclusion. I believe President Bush must not veto fuel standards. I have many reasons for this, reducing our need for Middle East oil being the most succinct.

I assert that increasing - or requiring - fuel standards will cut our demand for oil. 40% of our oil comes from our reserves, 35% comes from the Americas. That leaves roughly 25% to fill. (US oil supply breakdown)

My point is this: that 25% comes largely from the Middle East. If we can reduce our demand for oil in general, simple economics states that the oil we cut from the equation will be the oil that must travel the furthest distance, oil from the Saudi Arabia, Qatar, etc.

My point is weakened by our status as the system administrator in global security. See, Europe and Asia get most of their oil from the Middle East. So whether or not we are able to slice our demand for their oil, we may still be beckoned to the sandbox in order to secure the global economy.

Regardless, our economy and security would definitely benefit from not being as dependent on Middle East oil as we are today. Fuel standards are a way to start down that path. Bottom line, President Bush needs to sign it.

You are all thinking on too small of a scale.

The problem isn’t dependency on foreign oil or using too much oil; it is that the internal combustion engine is wildly inefficient. The only way to truly affect the global economy and our place in supporting OPEC is to develop fuel cell cars (preferably powered by hydrogen) that can be distributed on a mass scale. It is the only way to truly change the global economy and reverse or slow the effects of climate change.

Wasting money on ethanol, fuel standards, biomass etc., is just that, a waste. There needs to be an effort on the level of the Manhattan Project in order to develop technology that will be more than a band-aid for the current situation we find ourselves in. Alas, the sacrifices for normal Americans would probably be too painful, and so we will continue down our current path of quibbling over 25 or 28 mpg.

So how many troops do the gallon to you get again?

Brian, looking at the previous reply I can see that your brain is partly right. It’s also partly left. HAHAHAHA!

But seriously. The issue we are dealing with is the lack of innovation from car companies. There have been very few groundbreaking innovations from the automobile industry since its birth, save increased safety. I have feeling that we might look a bit primitive when we tell our grandchildren the cars we drove were powered by a continual series of small explosions in the front of the car.

That said, it is a sad day when the only way the auto industry innovates is with a gun to their back.

Brian if you want to skirt the issue that’s fine. I’m all for increased fuel standards, but Andy hits at the heart of the issue. Small explosions in the front of our cars, fueled only by a liquid resource that we have to import. It’s madness and pointless.

The current situation will never be resolved or (now pay close attention) even alleviated by fuel standards. It really will not. So get into huge political pandering arguments about it if you like, but my point remains that until oil is eliminated from personal transportation, it’s just a game of shifting money and influence around the same 3 or 4 groups. Instead of that, we should put it all into R&D for hydrogen cells and not throw treats to Iowa caucus voters over the pipe dream that ethanol is doing anything to help us.

Iowa. The Arabia of America.

In theory what your saying is right on. I just think you must concede that any such technology - if it exists - is many years away. So what are we supposed to do in the meantime, keep throwing troops into the sandbox? My point stands as is, we should try to cut our consumption so that we don’t have to make such broad and bloody commitments for an undetermined period of time. I do believe our troops are a scarce commodity as well.

BriansBrain,
Good point about gasoline. Great point about ethanol !
But I’m not so sure about hydrogen. Mainly due to the elements of distribution and placing massive quantities of liquid hydrogen in the hands of the public.
How about compressed air as a fuel ? Air in - air out.
http://www.theaircar.com/howitworks.html

very interesting.
i’m adding in RSS Reader

What do you mean ?