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.

A Siegel (via Stoller) reports:

According to Washington Post reporting, the coal industry is using an Astroturf organization, the Americans for Balanced Energy Choices, to wage a $35 million dollar effort to gain traction in the 2008 Presidential campaign for a more polluting future for America and the Globe....

ABEC is paying people to be at campaign events, in human billboards, and giving out leaflets at events. They have sponsored Presidential debates (here also).  They even had Santas giving out “Clean Coal” (reminder: that is ’somewhat less dirty coal’) at the Metro stations by the US Congress.

I've been encountering these ABEC folks around the web in my work to stop mountaintop removal coal mining at IloveMountains.org.

If $35 million in astroturf money isn't enough to convince you that 2008 is a defining year for coal, maybe their incredibly tactless website will:

[The ABEC website features an] array of young people, many of whom appear to be under 10 years of age, enlighten visitors about the happy, hunky-dory world of coal. Alicia sets down her book bag to explain how coal and environmentalism go hand in hand, while young Sarah tells how we have more energy in the form of coal than the Middle East has in oil. “I’m doing my homework,” she says. “You do yours too.”

You can "do your homework" by checking out the high cost of coal or discovering your power company's connection to mountaintop removal coal. If you like what you see, please join us in the fight.

$35 million is a lot of money, but not enough, perhaps, if you're on the wrong side of history.

The has a good preview on how energy is likely to dominate Bush's State of the Union address.

When it comes to energy, of course, Bush is a servant to the lords of yesterday, embracing the myth of "clean coal" (as though an industry that won't put sweepers on old chimneys will put infinitely more-expensive sequestration devices on new ones) and the dead-from-the-neck-up fantasy of nuclear power.

So what's left? Mostly hot air or dirty air:

The energy law passed in 2005 authorized $3.8 billion worth of renewable energy and conservation programs. But a vast majority of those programs are without funds, neither requested by the administration nor approved by Congress.

Callahan points to a $450 million consumer education and outreach campaign on energy efficiency in that law, but says "not one penny has been appropriated" nor has the money been sought by the administration....

Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman says the administration over the years has spent nearly $12 billion in developing new energy technologies. He cited the president's $2.1 billion "advanced energy initiative" in the State of the Union a year ago.

But most of that program goes for nuclear research and clean coal technology that generally has little impact on the country's dependence on oil, 70 percent of which is used in transportation.

For that, Bush told a renewable fuels conference last year in St. Louis, "we need to change how we power our automobiles. ... I like the idea of promoting a fuel that relies upon our farmers."

Why not just burn the bullshit that so many politicians toss around when they talk about energy? We could motor happily into infinity on that abundant resource.

James Howard Kunstler is his usual cheery self over the holidays:

The chief failure in American politics lately has been the inability to appreciate the relationship between how we live here and how other people in other lands support us with their resources -- oil from the Middle East, human labor and money saved from the fruits of human labor from the Far East. The oil obviously runs all the cars and the money from China and Japan supports our debt (and incidentally pays for building ever more big box stores and fried food emporia). The Middle East is now so close to exploding that we may not get so much oil from them in the years ahead. China and Japan have stepped back from buying American debt in the form of US Treasury certificates.

Even if there were no exogenous forces operating, the proverbial Man-From-Mars casual observer would have to conclude that America has built all the shopping venues it will ever need (and far beyond), and certainly more single-family housing subdivisions useful only in a happy motoring meta-system. But the exogenous events are out there and they are going to assert their power to make us uncomfortable and to alienate us from the very stuff that we have poured all of our wealth and spirit into.

The New York Times headlined yesterday that the US government might try to start negotiations with Iran and Syria over the fate of Iraq -- an idea so preposterous that it might have been a wire-story from The Onion. Iran and Syria have no interest in the matter whatsoever except in the failure of America to control events, and the humiliation entailed by that failure, which is happening on its own. So the story is a clear signal of our desperation that we are even pretending to make overtures.

For the US military this is a tragedy of classical Greek dimensions, a playing out of implacable forces despite its heroism or even good intentions. But for the American public, back home, enjoying the bright lights of the WalMarts and the steaming heaps of baby back ribs, and the comfort of the ride home with the latte plugged into the cup holder and Jay-Z's inspirational thoughts playing on the car stereo -- it's really the end of the road.

I've been saying for a long time that as our illusions dropped away, the US economy would fall on its face. I think the process is underway, especially with last week's movement of the dollar against the Euro. All the elements are now set for a full-throttle depression in which currancy loses value while credit dries up and incomes are lost. You get a fire-sale of assets that behaves like a deflation while the dollar itself inflates. The Federal reserve can't possibly drop interest rates if foreigners will not buy our bonds.

Losing your house to the re-po man is a major illusion-breaker. The housing bubble has popped and entered a downward self-reinforcing feedback loop that will be understood as a death-spiral of valuation. Even if nominal house prices stayed close to where they are, dollar inflation would signify a real drop in value. The jobs associated with the bubble -- everything from the legions of house-framers to the realtors to the creative mortgage hawkers to the Crate-and-Barrel furniture elves -- will drop into a black hole. Mortgage obligations will not be met, credit card payments will stop, house refinancings will no longer be possible as equity dissolves, the WalMart associates will get their pink slips, the vacancy signs will go up in the strip malls, and a mighty sob will be heard above the prairie wind.

This is really a tight spot. Wider war in the Middle East is hardly out of the question, with Iran and a broad array of jihadistas emboldened by America's flounderings in Iraq. A year from now, perhaps, or less, we will lose our access to a substantial portion of the imported oil that we run all our stuff on. The sodium vapor lamps will flicker out. The last taco will be served. The US public will have to start paying attention and making other arrangements. I believe what Garrison Keilor says about the people in Minnesota. Scratch below the surface, you'll find a thoughtful, practical mentality. I believe that when they can't do anymore of what they're doing now, they'll turn around and do something else.