Throughout its time in office, the Bush administration has fought every meaningful proposal to promote energy efficiency. Now, reacting to rising energy costs and tight supplies, President Bush and Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman have gotten religion.
We applaud, and hope the rhetoric will be accompanied by legislation to reduce the nation’s use of fossil fuels and the dangerous reliance on overseas oil supplies.
In 2001, Vice President Dick Cheney dismissed energy conservation as nothing more than “a personal virtue.” Now with Katrina-related supply shortages and high fuel prices, the president is exhorting Americans to cut energy use by such techniques as reducing the number of unnecessary car trips. “We can all pitch in,” he says. Similarly, Bodman has called on Americans to use less energy and announced an ad campaign that urges consumers to conserve.
“There are things that we believe the American people can do today,” Bodman said last week.
That is surely true, and there also are actions the Bush administration should take, too. But Bodman said the administration will continue “to resist mandatory standards of any kind.”
The Bush administration has promulgated rules that force new pickups and SUVs to get better gas mileage, but the main effect would be to checkmate California from imposing stricter carbon emission standards.
Yet mandatory standards can achieve results. In 2002, the National Academy of Sciences looked at how much energy the U.S. has saved since adopting auto fuel standards in 1975. “If fuel economy had not improved, gasoline consumption (and crude oil imports) would be about 2.8 million barrels per day greater than it is, or about 14 percent of today’s consumption,” the NAS said.
Three years ago, the academy said car makers could produce far more efficient vehicles using available technology and suggested the government adopt such standards. Bush ignored the advice. Recently, the National Environmental Trust, an advocacy group, used the academy data to calculate savings if the government had adopted tougher standards when the NAS proposed them. The result: savings of up to 1.5 million barrels of oil per day, about the same amount of energy lost when crude oil production got disrupted by Katrina and Rita.
Official exhortations and ad campaigns are no substitutes for solid policies that promote fuel efficiency.
