Spirituality and Ecological Hope

Fostering Ecological Hope
Today from Margaret Swedish:

Well, tax breaks for the coal industry made their way into Senate Finance Committee language, to be inserted into the mega-energy bill nearing a floor vote; but coal-to-liquid was another story where we can happily report a surprising industry defeat.

In a couple of floor votes, the Senate refused two provisions that would have greatly expanded production of coal for diesel fuel.

Read more about the week’s action on the Senate energy bill in this NY Times article and this even better article in the Washington Post from Wednesday. The Democratic proposal for $10 billion in loans for companies to build coal-to-liquid plants went down to defeat by 61-33, a bipartisan response from Democrats worried about global warming and Republicans upset that their bill to require a huge increase in coal-based fuels was defeated by Democrats.

Hey, whatever it takes.

By the way, the WP had a very strong editorial, Coal-to-Liquid boondoggle on CTL, which I have no doubt helped shape the debate on Capitol Hill.

The energy bill continues to take shape and it looks like the oil industry is about to lose some of its lucrative tax breaks, which are going to be transferred to subsidies for things like solar and wind, along with those troublesome ethanol-fuels, to which we have aired our concerns many times at this site (just put ‘ethanol’ in the search engine to find our comments and articles - an example).

The big battle now is over fuel efficiency standards for our cars and SUVs. The Times noted on Wednesday that something monumental has actually occurred — the Detroit automakers have lost the battle — before the public and in Congress — on the need for mandatory standards that force companies to increase gas mileage. Their champions in Congress — like Sen. Levin and Rep. Dingell, both Michigan Democrats — have let them know that they had better help shape the legislative language, or have it shaped for them.

Problem is, as you will read in the NYT article, Levin doesn’t want stringent standards. He wants something watered down to very little.

One gets tired of hearing how impossible all this is, how expensive, how it will cost jobs and profits — over 3 or more decades. If Congress had gotten tough on the industry back in the 70s during the oil crisis — say, for example, mandating at least 50 mpg by 1990 for all our personal vehicles — we would all be driving cars that would get 50 or more mpg — which would made a huge difference in our CO2 emissions, eased our reliance on foreign oil, and protected us from the huge gasoline price hikes, which will only grow higher as we approach peak oil.

I rather like what Sen. Durbin of Illinois said, from the end of the WP article:

Durbin became the latest senator to accuse Detroit auto companies of having created their own problems. Noting that the automakers’ principal objection to the Senate’s proposed fuel standards is that they are not economically feasible, Durbin blamed the companies’ weak financial positions on their lack of initiative in building more fuel-efficient vehicles.

“I feel very badly for the American auto industry,” Durbin said. “I wish that my friends in Detroit would spend a little more time with their engineering department, rather than their legal department.”

In the end, it is still so much about us and the choices we make. If we had not let Detroit appeal to our baser instincts for big powerful machines, the SUV fad would never have taken off. We could force this market to respond to us and our ecological crises by not buying their wasteful stuff anymore, but demanding more hybrids, driving smaller vehicles, and turning in our gas-guzzling SUVs.

[tags] energy bill, coal-to-liquid fuel, fuel efficiency standards[/tags]