The Bush White House has eschewed any notions of conservation of energy since day 1. Both the president and the vice president are deeply entrenched within the oil industries; conservation means less income, an so they’ve been loathe to so much as hint at the merits of it, despite the danger of our dependence on foreign oil. So credit is due to President Bush for making the simple, obvious suggestion yesterday that those who wish to express gratitude to our military “can car pool.” It’s a sign of how far the rabbit hole we’ve gone that it’s a victory for our president to acknowledge this, but I take what I can.
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Besides calling for energy conservation after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, Bush pushed conservation via the DOE during his first year in office, and also proposed and pushed through a major energy bill in 2005 that had several conservation initiatives in it.
Certainly, energy production (of all kinds, not just oil) has been a higher priority for Bush than conservation, but it doesn’t seem either fair nor accurate to say that he eschewed any and all conservation efforts since day one.
I’m not quite sure how servicemen & women will feel thanked if I carpool. I’ll stick to the care packages and prayers. (That’s not to say carpooling isn’t a good idea, which it is. I’m just not following Dubyah on the cause-effect on that particular ‘thank you’ method.)
I’m not arguing that President Bush has never had anything to do with any interest in conservation, ever, merely that he has “been loathe to so much as hint at the merits of it.” When the topic of national security comes up, that’s his chance to call for drilling on the National Mall or oil, or whatever, rather than saying something obvious like “well, we could carpool.”
This is first time that I’ve seen President Bush connect the big and amorphous matter of national security to a small and innocuous method of reducing energy use.
Token efforts and talking points is not conservation, especially when those token efforts are frequently combined with iniatives that are utterly disastrous to the environment. I have seen absolutely no effort to address consumption problems in a serious way coming from that administration, nor will I ever. But they do see the writing on the wall (the oil industry that is) and as they start to invest in alternative fuels, so does the administration. If the oil industry discovered today that we can solve all of our energy problems with peanut butter and they were going to invest in that technology, we would see a major pro-peanut butter policy initiative tomorrow.
If building wider roads often induces more traffic because it stimulates growth in the areas along that road, or because it allows more people to come from farther away, so too wouldn’t carpooling induce more people to drive from farther away because the roads are less utilized?
It’s also uneconomical for me to carpool, as the extra time spent away from work is worth more than the saved gas, and that’s for carpooling with someone in my own neighborhood. (To be fair, my car also gets 32-38 mpg, I drive 16 mi each way, and we split gas 50/50, which admittedly, is only a fraction of the cost of owning and operating a car). This would be easily solved by a carpool lane.
Carpooling is a great source of efficiency, but without economic incentives, it remains fringe. Carpool lanes and restricted access roads are one great way of achieving results, and taxes both in the form of tolls (use taxes on roads) and in the form of pigouvian taxes on gas (to represent the actual cost of burning that gas) are two more good ways of dealing with these problems.
In essence, the problem comes down to tax structure and city planning issues. Just telling people to carpool will ultimately do nothing.
This is coming from someone who carpools even though it is against my economic best interests. I’ve decided that the company is worth the lost time.
During the last energy crunch, the national speed limit was reduced, I doubt we’ll see that now.
I took a 700 mile trip in May and tried to stay at the speed limit and my m.p.g. went up just over 10%.
As an aside, I just received my electric bill today, it was 15% lower than last month. The only thing different in our household was I lowered the temp. on our hot water heater.
Wow, that’s great news on the power bill, Brian. What a difference.
It is still hot enough for my wife who likes to take HOT baths!
In some places I have lived, just cycling the hot water heater (electric) has saved me as much as 40% of a previous bill. It is one of the easiest fixes for a high power bill that a person can do.
When I lived in Colorado, I had a device on my gas hot water heater that automatically turned down the temperature (just like your heater/AC thermostat) on a schedule that you set yourself. I haven’t seen these devices for sale anywhere I usually shop.
I want a solar hot water heater, and a fair net-metered PV setup. We are constantly driving towards a more self-sustaining lifestyle.
Now, back to next winter’s tomatoes and squash. Yum!
(BTW, over 40 qts of beans already canned this summer!)