fuel efficiency

Awakening to the possibility of a sustainable, equitable and healthy humanity in our lifetimes!

I’ll admit it, I spent more than two and a half decades depressed about the lost opportunities to create a renewable energy economy that would spare us from the environmental disasters attendant on burning fossil fuels. Once Ronald Reagan ripped the solar panels off the roof of the White House and our government abandoned serious improvements in transportation fuel efficiency standards and pretty well killed off renewables R&D, I lost a big part of the hope and optimism of my youth. Year after year, we failed to make even the least sensible steps toward converting away from fossil fuels, and I got more and more resigned to the prospect of looming catastrophe.

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CAFE Standards

By Sanchez / Tennis|2017-01-13T11:29:08-07:00September 20th, 2009|Tags: CAFE, climate, energy, environment, fuel efficiency, mileage, Obama, sustainability|

I’m pleased to see the Obama administration proposing large increases in fleet fuel efficiency standards. In my mind, we’ve squandered nearly thirty years of potential economic efficiency and national security through egregious foot-dragging by hidebound Detroit executives and a dangerously near-sighted Congress. 35 miles per gallon would be easy to reach, if not already the norm, if we had simply stayed the course we began on in the late 1980’s, on the heels of the first gas crisis.

Now, with nearly insurmountable climate effects added to the drag on our economy and risks to our security associated with dependence on far too much foreign oil, we have to bite the bullet and get on with it. As usual, it’s a case of “Pay me now or pay me later”, and many of those who scream about our “drastic” intervention in the market are the same pundits who opposed sensible, gradual improvements when they could have been far more painless.

At this point, Detroit, the Pentagon, and ardent environmentalists all agree that this move to greatly increase CAFE standards is essential. Let’s just accept the fact that the bill has come due for three decades of self-delusion about the urgency of the energy efficiency crisis, raise the standards, and get on the rest of the challenges facing our country.