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July 26, 2007 5:04 PM
Overwhelming Support for Stronger Fuel Economy Standards
Recently, the U.S. Senate passed energy legislation requiring American carmakers to achieve an average fuel efficiency standard of 35 mpg by 2020. But counterpart legislation has stalled in the House, as an auto-industry-backed proposal with much weaker standards (the Hill-Terry bill, supported by Rep. John Dingell) competes for support with the Markey-Platts bill, which has standards equally as strong as the Senate's legislation.
Now, this just in from the Pew Campaign for Fuel Efficiency...a new poll showing massive support for passing the Senate version of this legislation. Strong majorities want to see fuel economy standards that are higher, are binding, come into force sooner, and are not capped.
The poll was taken in 30 congressional districts in 7 different states. Survey respondents also noted that if these strong standards were adopted, they would feel that Congress "had accomplished something important" and that this would favorably influence their opinion of Congress as a whole.
Most notable of all were the results from Michigan's 15th congressional district -- represented by none other than John Dingell. 84 percent of respondents there favored higher fuel efficiency standards. And when presented with the elements of the Hill-Terry bill versus those of the Markey-Platts bill, voters preferred the stronger Markey-Platts legislation by a factor of almost three to one.
Of course, at least a million dollars of John Dingell's personal wealth is in General Motors, his wife is on their payroll, and auto industry sources are by far his largest contributors. But it sure would be nice if once in a while a politician put the clear wishes of his constituents -- as well as the best interests of the nation -- ahead of the erroneous "sky is falling" claims of his campaign donors.
Take action here and tell YOUR representative to support the Markey-Platts bill.
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Discussion
It will be fascinating to see if people will actually want to buy the cars. CAFE is a strange policy tool because it retsricts production rather than consumers. (It restricts THEM not ME.) I think people really do believe that there is "secret engine technology" that will allow them to get 50 MPG in their Escalades.
Unfortunately, it won't happen. Cars and vans will need to get a lot smaller and lighter -- and car dependent suburbanites won't be willing to go along for the ride. Be careful of what you wish for.
The Cafe standards are a farce and canard already in Germany the buses run on Hydrogen and India has developed a Compressed Air Engine that does 68 mph. and runs all day on $2.00 of Compressed Air..! AIR..!!
BMW has a full line of hydrogen engine cars they developed a hydrogen head that goes on top of their standard gas engine block..!
We need to Nationalize The American Oil Industry and all energy and kick start this economy like never before and then lower fuel casts by 30-33% and still have nearly $60 billion per year for engine designs, alternate energy development, renewable energy development, oil infrastructure, and also bolster National Security, this is the solution not to mention global warming we'd even have the money to develop clean coal technology and perhaps Fusion..!
Imagine up to $50-60 billion per year for this it is the future how many senseless wars will we fight and millions die before we do the math..?
Cars and vans are already too small right now.
I have several family members, myself included, who can not get into a compact car's drivers' seat, because we are to tall and long-legged for the interior of the car. Even riding as passengers for very long is torture, there's no place for our feet, and our heads bump the roof.
Much as I would like to buy a more economical vehicle, I can't get my foot on the brake pedal because my knee hits the steering column, even with the seat in the farthest back position, which then makes it a two-passenger vehicle.
Economical vehicles need to become more ergonomic before they'll become very popular.
What we really need are more electric hybrids, of a size that fits tall people. The range on the hybrids can be extended by the addition of solar panels on the roof, which would also serve to recharge the vehicle when no plug-ins are available.
Smaller is definitely not better, when it comes to vehicles.
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