the difference a president makes

The country made a huge leap forward today, one that the Bush Administration had worked valiantly for years to impede, and one this President hurdled in less than 4 months. The improvement?--greatly improving the mileage requirements of vehicles sold in America. American automakers, who after watching their companies fail, may finally be getting it, will have to improve the average mileage of all vehicles to 35.5 mpg by 2016. That's up almost 10 mpg from today and represents a significant improvement in energy policy. Automakers will complain that they can't make money on these small cars but the last time I looked, they weren't making money on big ones either. Time to rethink the business strategy and we now have the leverage to make it happen.

Now the next step. The largest US consumer of petroleum products is the military. They consume about 21 billion gallons per day (CIA, 2005). We are making wars so that the military can fuel its vehicles in order to fight those wars. Time to stop. How about an all electric assault vehicle? Leave it to the Swiss! I'm not sure it makes sense but how much of the military does?

You can read a lot more about issues related to US military consumption of oil at the Energy Bulletin. Some interesting facts. No one seems to know exactly how oil the military consumes primarily because the actual numbers go unreported. (Only Cheney knows for sure). Also, vehicle fuel accounts for about 3/4's of the military's consumption yet most energy reduction programs brought forth by the Department of Defense are targeted at buildings.

I guess some day we'll learn or we'll start a war trying.