At least one of member of the Buffalo News editorial staff is, um, unsatisfied over Bush's proposed fuel mileage standards.
But loose CAFE standards don't just affect global temperatures. Pollution fuels public health care costs. Tougher fuel-efficiency standards also would go further toward weaning America off its addiction to oil and its back-breaking defense and security price tag. The new fuel economy rules are projected to save 10.7 billion gallons of gas and their pollution over the lifetime of vehicles sold from 2008 through 2011. But that's how much oil America now consumes in about 11 days, or the gasoline that drivers go through in a single month.
OK, those new standards will increase the mpg requirements for light trucks from 21.6 to 24 miles per gallon.
“We took a good, close look at automakers’ plans, examined new technology that is in use or under development – like hybrids and the latest generation of diesel-burning engines – and decided that we could ask more of the manufacturers than we proposed last August,” Mineta said. He added that the new standards mean that some light trucks will now have to meet a fuel economy target of 28.4 milers per gallon, which is higher than today’s standard for passenger cars.
The Buffalo News (and the entire environmental establishment, I'd wager) aren't happy with that. So, let's imagine that the Bush administration had imposed requirements that doubled the mileage reduction. Bush proposed an 11% reduction -- let's go 22%. Light trucks would now have to get 26.4 miles per gallon and we'll assume that even more trucks would be included in the regulations. With that proposal, we'd be projected to save 21.4 billion gallons of gas along with its accompanying pollution.
That would make everyone happy, wouldn't it? Nah! How much do you want to bet that the same editorial writer would have written this?
The new fuel economy rules are projected to save 21.4 billion gallons of gas and their pollution over the lifetime of vehicles sold from 2008 through 2011. But that's how much oil America now consumes in about 22 days, or the gasoline that drivers go through in two months.
And we could go on and on and on. At some point, say quadruple the new rules, we'd only save 44 days of gas and the earth will still burn up.
Just admit it. If you don't like Bush, you'll never be satisfied with anything he does. Stop trying to justify it by statistics as silly as these and just go vote. If enough of you can figure out how to punch the hole in the ballot, you might have a chance at winning one day.
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