Obama pushing stronger fuel-efficiency standard »
Posted By STONERS 11 months, 1 week ago in Political News
President Barack Obama ordered the government Monday to re-examine whether California and other states should be allowed to have tougher auto emission standards to combat a build up of greenhouse gases, a clean break from Bush administration policy.
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STONERS11 months, 1 week ago
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"Obama also directed his administration to get moving on new fuel-efficiency guidelines for the auto industry in time to cover 2011 model-year cars."
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"For the sake of our security, our economy and our planet, we must have the courage and commitment to change," Obama said in his first formal event in the ornate East Room of the White House."
"It will be the policy of my administration," he said, "to reverse our dependence on foreign oil while building a new energy economy that will create millions of jobs."-
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m-simon11 months, 1 week ago
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What we need are vehicles that can go 1 million miles on a micro watt of power.
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And if Mr. Obama was serious he would demand that the car companies start delivering such a vehicle next month or pay a billion dollars a second fines.
All he has to do is get Congress to pass the right laws and he can do anything. He is the Magic President. The ONE.
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buckncindykill11 months, 1 week ago
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For the sake of destroying our car companies, he's starting off on the right foot. At a time when the car companies are reeling from cafe standards, he's gonna slap them with "more" regulations. How incredibly stupid is this? Oh wait, he's a liberal. That's the answer for everything. Silly me.
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jimdoze11 months, 1 week ago
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"It will be the policy of my administration," he said, "to reverse our dependence on foreign oil while building a new energy economy that will create millions of jobs."
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If he started with federal efforts on the grid and cleared the decks to build a few dozen more nukes, I could take it seriously. Industrial economies require industrial sources of energy. I love windmills and the direct conversion of sunlight to electricity. However, Wind Power and Photovoltaics will not provide industrial quantities of power sufficient to replace hydrocarbons any time in the next half century. -
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buckncindykill11 months, 1 week ago
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Should-a-could-a-would-a. The fact is people weren't buying the fuel efficient cars. Not enough anyway to help the car companies stay afloat. Now that they're on life support and in need of oxygen, we strangle them with more regulations. Start somewhere yes, but that "sometime" is not when they are teetering on collapse. When they prove they can survive, then gradually bring in the refulations. I want more fuel efficient cars too, but when GM collapses, what good has all those regulations done?
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Natureboy11 months, 1 week ago
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How stupid is it NOT to demand more efficient vehicles? If Detroit had bought a vowel and started building vehicles as fuel efficient as they are able to, they likely wouldn't have needed a bailout.
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We could be getting 260 MPG in something like this -
http://www.seriouswheels.com/cars/top-vw-1-liter-c... -
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wtagg11 months, 1 week ago
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What is ironic is that conservatives (well, maybe the alleged ones who aren't really conservative) want decisions to be made at the state level.
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You are getting your wish. The companies that will do well will be those that can work within those markets. Those that can't, won't.
I want companies that can as I am tired of companies that whine and needed socialistic handouts. -
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Endoscopy11 months, 1 week ago
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Liberals want to kill the car companies. What an insight. They are almost out of business and he wants to drive them over the edge. Way to go. Then try to blame the car companies.
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Who is going to pay for this. The consumers that are having trouble to by a new car. What does a few thousand more mean.-
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wtagg11 months, 1 week ago
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Exactly what you tried to blame on the mortgage crisis, if you can't afford it you are criminal to try to buy it. It is 100% the consumer's fault.
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I'll give you a chance to tell us how returning some control back to the state level is liberal. Just as a warning, this is what one might call teeing up the ball. -
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sinophil4911 months, 1 week ago
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endo - "Liberals want to kill the car companies." What a stupid comment. We don't wnat any company to die. We want them to all realize what stupid corporate decisions they have made the past decade and a half. We want them to become environmentally responsible. We want them to produce more fuel efficient cars. We want them to produce cars that will compete with the Prius.
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Did you know that the Corporate Average Fuel Efficiency standard has not changed since 1990, primarily due to corporate lobbying by both the auto makers and the oil industry aimed mostly at the Republicans? Almost 2 decades and no improvement!!! This is an outrageous travesty!!!
Every decade, every year, every day that our cars do not improve depletes the world's oil supply further, worsens our pollution, and increases our oil dependency to those Muslim countries that you neocons are so afraid of. The sooner we raise our fuel efficiency standards and improve our cars, the less we will depend on the Mideast countries.
Is that not what you want? Is that not in the long run advantageous for our USA? -
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UnusualSuspect11 months, 1 week ago
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The car companies (at least the American ones) are killing themselves by building inferior products and not having any vision for future fuels usage. Same old, same old.
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So...undo...do you favor a bailout for the car companies or not? Bail them out so they can continue doing the same thing for the next 50 years, or force them to start doing things right?
Sounds to me like you'd rather keep the status quo in all areas of American life (the american life of the last 50 years) but not look at all into what this country needs for the future.
Do you ever look into the future at all, or are you always looking back? -
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m-simon11 months, 1 week ago
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If the car companies were really serious they could design a 10,000 mpg car. The only reason they haven't done that is that they are in cahoots with the oil companies.
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After all when technology was simpler they suppressed the 100 mpg carburetor. So by now they should have technology that is 100 times better.
The ONE should just give orders and make it so. -
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Gransater11 months, 1 week ago
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Endo
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Isn't the capitalistic way of doing bussiness mantra that each company stands on its own? If they can't sell their product, they go out of bussiness, get sold to another company, or restructure themselves with a loan in the private sector.
It appears that you want them to be bailed out. Isn't that a "liberal" idea? What has bailing out to do with capitalism, something that, again, you seem to advocate?
Drive them over the edge, and then blame the car companies. Haven't they brought themselves to the edge, with erroneous bussiness decisions? As to blaming the car companies, whose fault is it that they are where they are, if not their own.
Actually, WE, the consumer and tax payer allways end up paying for these decisions, whether through high prices of a product, or through, in this case, our taxes. Surely you must have figured that out long ago. It's ok to admit it.
Having trouble buying a new car. Yes, the public in general is having trouble paying for things nowdays, with the cost increases in just about every regular daily expenditure, job losses for many etc. Buying a new car is low on the priority for many people. And there actually are choices out there, of foreign branded cars made in America.
If we let companies fail instead of bailing them out, maybe the surviving companies would sit up and take notice, and even maybe change the way they operate so that they can become viable in the long term. -
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amazed11 months, 1 week ago
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Tougher CAFE standards might not be a bad idea, but allowing each state to set its own rules is insanity. This could easily result in the need for the auto manufacturers to have to build 50 (or 52 if DC and PR get to set their own standards, too) of each model.
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Yeah, that'll help 'em get back on their feet.-
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wtagg11 months, 1 week ago
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"allowing each state to set its own rules is insanity."
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Is this a quote I can use when dealing with other subjects that the republican party want to apply it to? Obama is giving power back to the states. What is not conservative about that?
Either you have a stronger federal government or a federal government that returns power back to the local level. You can't jury pick what you want and don't want. The state of Montana may not need the restrictions that CA wants or desires.
Do you think that the car companies will not charge for the regulation compliance? -
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Gransater11 months, 1 week ago
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Amazed
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California has had their own standars for many years. It doesn't appear that the market has been hindered in any meningfull way by this.
Also, all the companies have to do, is build a vehicle that adheres to the toughest standard, then they can sell them in the whole country.
Also, with all the varied options available on cars, 52 variations per model, seems quite conservative.
What will get them back on their feet is to build a car the public is willing and able to buy. Why should we have to support a bussiness entity that doens't sell us what we want???
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willottica11 months, 1 week ago
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... or they could just build one that's sufficient to meet all standards. It gives the state with the strictest regulations more power, but if they set them too strict, the companies could just ignore the one state.
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Allowing states to set their own standards will actually ENCOURAGE the market to decide what fuel emission standards can and should be.
The car-makers won't want to lose a state where they can meet the standards, but won't bother if the standards are too strict (forcing the state to ease up).
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Republicrat1844Comment removed: Retracted by user1 Reply
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m-simon11 months, 1 week ago
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What we need are vehicles that can go 1 million miles on a micro watt of power.
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And if Mr. Obama was serious he would demand that the car companies start delivering such a vehicle next month or pay a billion dollars a second fines.
All he has to do is get Congress to pass the right laws and he can do anything. He is the Magic President. The ONE. -
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Hhussk11 months, 1 week ago
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As Rahm Emanuel stated: "Never waste a crisis".
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Their goal is to use this recession/depression tone of fear to gather a large sum of money (currently 1 trillion+) to further their goals of the largest government expansion in history.
With energy, they intend to push solar, wind, and alternative fuels. President Obama has already stated he intends to break the back of the clean coal industry.
The Obama administration is using this recession as a means to take more money from its people, to further its socialist agenda.
To all of you who claimed Bush was an imperialist dictator who tried to sieze power. You have elected a President who not only wants to quadruple the size of government, but wants to dictate who can have the money you work for. -
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m-simon11 months, 1 week ago
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We could save a lot of gasoline if the car companies would design a car that could fit a family of four into one cubic inch.
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You have to ask yourself: why haven't the car companies done this? After all if I can think of it so can they.-
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Gransater11 months, 1 week ago
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H
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It must have been very convinient to walk into the WH, and not have to create a national disaster, but have one waiting on him. Sure cut out a lot of time in creating one!
Yeah, why should we tame and use something we can count on every day, such as sunligth and wind, when we can go out and tear up our environment digging for coal, run it through a processing plant, then burn it, sending out the smoke through non filtered smokestaks. Really stupid.
Agree, who wants socialistic ideas in office? Ridiculous. Throwing money willy nilly at Wall Street is sooo much more fun and productive.
Yeah, how can we quadruple the size of goverment, when we allready commited all that money over in the middle east, allowed the current economic crisis to shackle us, let all those manufacturing plants leave the country, etc, etc and so on. I mean, how stupid can they be, right? -
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chevydog11 months, 1 week ago
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Hhussk- I've been trying to reason out "clean coal". Think that use of coal in some way would do our national energy policy good. But I'm slowly coming to the conclusion that "clean coal" is a myth.
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Coal is primarily carbon. All coal contains some level of sulfur or sulfur-bearing compounds. Burn carbon and you get carbon dioxide; burn sulfur or sulfur compunds and you get sulfur dioxide. Both carbon dixide and sulfur dioxide are acid gases. They can be recovered in chemical or physical solvents; but what absorbs the one tends to absorb the other. As it turns out, sulfur dioxide is considered an impurity in carbon dioxide. It's very corrosive, especially in the presence of moisture. Historically, there hasn't been much use for CO2 contaminated with SO2. I've seen proposals to use it for gas pressurization of old oil fields; but nothing has ever been tested or proven that I know of.
Seems to me the best way to approach this would be desulfurization of the coal to begin with. That could reduce sulfur levels by maybe 80-90% and make a broader range of coal usable. There's a price for it-- there's a price for everything. But burning coal without getting CO2 just isn't chemically in the cards. -
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m-simon11 months, 1 week ago
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There are single passenger vehicles out that can get 80 or 100 mpg. If they were designed to carry 1/2 a passenger we could probably double that. If we went with a 1/4 passenger vehicle think of the savings.
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I blame the car companies for keeping such fuel efficient vehicles off the market. -
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BB6411 months, 1 week ago
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Rather than making it even more difficult to build and sell cars, why doesn't BO start drilling and building new refineries. China has several new plants on line converting coal into gasoline. I know you guys will bash me but that's a part of the reason there is an oil surplus. China has reduced it's foreign oil buying and now keep all of the money there. Too bad our lefties are so very anti-industry for the USA.
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Gransater11 months, 1 week ago
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BB
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May I suggest a trip to China. There was a very specific reason why a lot of plants around Bejing were closed down during the olympics, and good will towards workers to see the games wasn't one of them.
We can't drill our way out of this. (The grand daddy of wildcatters T.B. Pickens has said so publicly). Why not spend the money where it will give us sustained energy in the future, without risking running out of it, as in the case of oil.
It's not anti-industry to push for newer and better ideas. Its called progressive thinking. Left or right has nothing to do with it. It's just what probably will be best for all of us, in the long run. -
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sinophil4911 months, 1 week ago
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BB - The US absolutely does not need more oil drilling. The 1/12/09 issue of Time magazine had a feature article on conservation. The main point is that using conservation techniques currently available on a wide scale would save 20% or more of our energy usage.
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Simple things like using double pane windows and caulking old windows and doors, insulating pipes and ducts, insulating walls and attics, installing programmable thermostats, tuning our cars, properly inflating our tires, using fluorescent bulbs, buying only energy efficient appliances, turning off TV's, game consoles, and computers - these are all things that we all can do. Large companies like Hewlett-Packard have cut their energy consumption by 20%.
If we started more drilling and bulding refineries tomorrow, they would not come on-line until 2017 or 2018. Significant increases in our oil supply would be seen by about 2030.
Using all the available conservation as above would save as much oil as would be produced additionally in 2030.
Moreover, drilling more now simply means we will reach the end of our national oil reserves much sooner. We have about 3% of the world's available oil. But we consume 20% of the world's energy production. Once we deplete our oil reserves, we have no choice except to buy Mideast oil - on their terms.
The current drop in oil prices and mini-glut is primarily due to decreased driving, decreased purchasing and consumption, decreased manufacturing, and the global economic slump. Just goes to show the power of less oil consumption on oil prices.
Lefties are not anti-industry. We want all industries to flourish and provide jobs for everyone. The entire country will benefit if we keep oil prices down. Drilling more now will inevitably lead to higher oil prices and increased pollution down the line. In the long run, righties are more anti-industry because more oil drilling now means there will be less incentive for citizens and industry to conserve or seek alternative fuels and purchase hybrid cars. Then when we are stuck w/ no more domestic oil, oil prices will skyrocket up higher than ever. Industries will fail left and right. Our standard of living will drop. We will not have the alternative fuel industry that we could have had up and running. and we will be licking the sandal straps of all those oil sheiks.
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djn3nunez311 months, 1 week ago
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Oh the horror of mandated 35 mpg vehicles. Wait didn't we already have a President try and get us off foriegn oil with a combination of conservation and alternative energy research? Oh Yeah, Jimmy Carter did that only to have Ronnie Raygun and the Fat Cats dismantle the entire program......opps, seems like Carter was right again!
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