Warner's Good Idea
No, not Mark Warner. In the credit where credit is due file, the other Warner from Virginia -- that would be the Republican Senator, John Warner -- deserves kudos for touching the third rail (or is it the brake pedal?) of energy politics:
Sen. John Warner, R-Va., asked Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman to look into what speed limit would provide optimum gasoline efficiency given current technology. He said he wants to know if the administration might support efforts in Congress to require a lower speed limit....
Warner cited studies that showed the 55 mph speed limit saved 167,000 barrels of oil a day, or 2 percent of the country's highway fuel consumption, while avoiding up to 4,000 traffic deaths a year.
"Given the significant increase in the number of vehicles on America's highway system from 1974 to 2008, one could assume that the amount of fuel that could be conserved today is far greater," Warner wrote Bodman.
It's amazing the degree to which Obama -- not to mention most of the environmental elite in this country -- are allowing McCain and Gingrich to define the solution to higher gas prices as "drill here, drill now."
Anyone with any understanding of what is really going on knows that that won't make a cent of a difference in the short term -- and only half a cent in the long term.
Yet we have to wait for a Republican to raise conservation as the true solution. Ah, well, no surprise there; I've seen little indication that either Obama, or anyone on his campaign, truly grasps the energy problem before us.
Energy Department spokeswoman Angela Hill said the department will review Warner's letter but added, "If Congress is serious about addressing gasoline prices, they must take action on expanding domestic oil and natural gas production."
Actually, the opposite is true. The only serious way to reduce gas prices is through conservation. But when John friggin' Warner is the only guy even raising that as a possibility, what's the likelihood of that coming to fruition?
Technorati Tags: energy, economy, politics, environment, conservation.
