The House just passed a bill raising efficiency standards for cars, lightbulbs, and appliances, as well as funding huge subsidies for corn-based ethanol. Everyone in Washington seems pretty pleased with themselves. But as far as I can tell, this bill is the equivilant of me switching the lightbulbs in my house to CFLs and turning the powerstrip off when we’re not watching the TV. Nice gesture, reduces the impact a bit, everyone should be doing it… but it’s not going to save the planet. Here are my issues:
1: New fuel standards will require new cars to get at least an average of 35 miles per gallon, a 40% increase from the current 25 mpg standard. That’s lovely. My 1986 Toyota gets 37 miles per gallon right now. Mind you, this standard won’t go into full effect for twelve more years. So in 2020 my car which was made 34 years before will still be more fuel efficient than your average family car will be required to be. That’s progress, right there. (Please note that there’s nothing special about my Toyota - it’s just a good car - and I do not actually expect it to be around in 2020, but if it was, I would still drive it!)
2: Ethanol subsidies are taking us down the wrong road. Aside from the fact that it is the least energy efficient alternative fuel out there (in terms of the ratio of fossil fuel input to energy output), aside from the fact that I think that in a world in which millions of people go to bed hungry and thousands starve to death every single day it is crime to grow anything but food on arable cropland, there is this important point:
“For farmers and agribusiness, the energy bill is a windfall, perhaps providing more support than the farm bill. It doubles the use of corn-based ethanol - despite criticism that corn-based ethanol is driving up food prices, draining aquifers, and exacerbating fertilizer runoff that is creating dead zones in many of the nation’s rivers.”
-Boston Globe
For the purposes of this post I”m going to ignore the fact that the last two are things regular farming does as well… I’ll get to that in a future diatribe. Ethanol may be a reasonable solution for Brazil (though by no means a permanent fix) where they make it from sugar cane, which is both cheaper and much more land and fossil fuel efficient, but in the US where the ratio of energy in to energy out in corn-based ethanol is only about 1:2 (not counting the environmental distruction and hidden costs of rising food prices) it is just not worth it. There may be a magic biofuel out there that will free us from our dependency, but corn ain’t it.
3: They cut out the bit where clean energy like wind and solar get more tax breaks and oil companies get few tax breaks. Excuse me, but I don’t think that what is effectively the most lucrative and the most environmentally distructive industry we have, one which everyone currently uses due to need for energy and lack of alternatives should be getting any tax breaks at all. Unless they are working to develop clean alternative energies. That they can can get tax breaks for. But other than that, I say tax them and give the money to alternative energy research. Like rats fleeing a sinking ship for dry land, they will follow the money.
In conclusion, despite some very laudable legislation about lightbulbs and dishwashers, I think this bill will do more harm than good. It allows our lawmakers to sit back and say, “We passed new energy standards, we gave money to alternative fuels…it’s not perfect but we’ll look at it again in 12 years or so,” while the environment continues to go to hell. Our meager cuts aren’t even offsetting our own growth, much less what China and India are doing (it may be the other side of the world, but guess what? We all share the same atmosphere.) This bill gives excuse to do nothing more. Our lawmakers are afraid (and rightly so!) of pushing the auto and oil industries. Saying, this is what you have to do - if you don’t have the technology now then you’d better invent it because this is what is required to make a real difference. In a country that went to the actual moon in an actual spaceship after the government decided that was a priority, I find it very hard to believe that we can’t make solar power feasble or be driving 100mpg cars in a couple of decades if that’s what we really wanted to do. And saying to the public - it is nice that you want big powerful cars that burn a lot of gas, but you simply cannot have them unless we find a better way to power them because that is harmful to all of us. That is the government’s primary duty: to protect everyone under its rule. To me, that consistents pretty much of preventing people or companies from doing things that hurt other people or the society as a whole.
