Yesterday both President Bush and experts before a special North
Carolina panel on Global Warming addressed our
nation’s addiction to oil. President
Bush said that he has “no “magic wand to wave” to solve rising gas prices. Yet President Bush and Congress repeatedly
have passed up the chance to save consumers money on gas and help stop global
warming. That magic wand: requiring cars and trucks to go further on a
gallon of gas.
Experts before the North Carolina Study Commission on
Climate Change testified that the transportation sector overall accounts for a
third of the nation’s global warming pollution.
David Greene, a transportation researcher at the Oak Ridge National
Laboratory in Tennessee, said
improving the fuel efficiency of vehicles could reduce the most global warming
pollution of any change in the transportation sector.
Instead of announcing a plan to reduce our dependence on oil
and help stop global warming, while saving consumers on gasoline, President
Bush has proposed a plan that will do neither.
Environment North Carolina
proposes a 10-step plan for Congress, President Bush, and state leaders to
reduce our dependence on oil and help stop global warming, starting with
increasing fuel efficiency for cars and trucks.
10-Step Plan to Break America’s
Oil Habit and Stop Global Warming
President Bush and Congress can reduce America’s
dependence on oil and help stop global warming by taking these actions:
Require cars and trucks to go farther
on a gallon of gas. According to the National Academy of
Sciences, currently available technology can make cars and trucks nearly
double their gas mileage to an average of 40 mpg within a decade without
reducing the size, power, or variety of cars available to consumers.
Had the President done this in 2001, consumers would be saving more than
$8.7 billion in 2006 alone (more than $500 per new vehicle.)
- Adopt nationwide limits on global
warming pollution to ensure that we prevent the worst impacts of
global warming.
- Stop efforts to drill for oil in our
beautiful coasts and in other pristine areas like the Arctic National
Wildlife Refuge. The
Refuge would provide less than a year’s worth of oil that would take ten
years to get to market. Given the
benefits of renewable energy and increasing energy efficiency, and the
importance of places like the Outer Banks to North
Carolina’s economy and identity, we should not
drill off our beaches.
- Fund clean energy programs by
enacting a windfall tax on excessive oil industry profits.
- Reduce the amount we drive by
increasing the federal investment in public transportation.
- Restore states’ rights to regulate
automobile fuel economy standards. North
Carolina has shown that it can be a leader in
energy and transportation solutions. The federal law blocking states
from requiring cars to get better gas mileage should be eliminated.
State leaders can reduce our dependence on oil and help stop
global warming by taking these actions:
- Enact the “Clean Cars Act” (S 1006/H
1460) to get more fuel-efficient hybrids on the roads, and to pave the
way for a new fleet of cars that emit drastically less global warming
pollution.
- Setting a goal of reducing global
warming pollution by 10% by 2020 to set us on track to reverse the
worst impacts of global warming.
- Providing tax credits for the purchase
of fuel-efficient hybrids and other alternative fuel vehicles to
complement federal tax credits.
- Invest in research and development of
and promote farm-based bio-fuels that can boost North
Carolina’s economy and significantly cut global
warming pollution.
