The Bush administration have acknowledged that the energy bill just signed into law by the president will do nothing in the short term — the short term being a decade or so — to ease fuel prices and decrease US dependence on imported oil, and the New York Times reports today that the administration are abandoning a proposal to subject large sport utility vehicles such as the Hummer to fuel economy regulations.
But all is not lost. The White House has announced that consumers suffering from dramatic increases in the price of a gallon of gas — we have made an editorial decision to avoid the phrase “spiralling gas prices” because it isn’t a spiral so much as a vertical line — can now visit a government web site filled with tips on how to increase fuel economy and minimize fuel use.
The site suggests drivers keep their cars in shape, drive efficiently, buy new, higher-mileage vehicles and run multiple errands on one trip so as to cut down on travel mileage.
These are all good ideas and we applaud the government for doing the research necessary to develop them. Vice president Dick Cheney once said, “Conservation may be a sign of personal virtue, but it is not a sufficient basis all by itself for a sound, comprehensive energy policy,” and although we’re not sure that means conservation should be excluded entirely from energy policy, it’s only fitting that a values-based administration should help us out a bit on the personal virtue front.
In the same spirit, we’ve come up with a few tips of our own.
- Make more money. Studies show that people who make a lot of money are less concerned about and better able to afford increased fuel prices than people who don’t make much money.
- Reinvent yourself as an energy company. The tax breaks and subsidies you’ll receive from the new energy bill will let you keep an entire fleet of Hummers topped off with premium.
- If you can possibly avoid it, don’t invade a Middle East country and cut its oil production in half. Although anyone who can afford to do so probably won’t feel the resulting fuel price pinch, it’s tough on the rest of us.
- Buy a Congress and instruct them to introduce fuel economy measures and promote alternative energy sources. This is expensive too, but studies show that the ROI is beyond phenomenal. (See, energy industry, pharmaceutical firms.)
Like the government’s tips, these are only stop-gap measures designed to get you through the decade of rising fuel prices ahead, with the possible exception of the Congress-buying tip — “possible” because there’s always the chance you’ll get outbid during the next election cycle — but they’re all guaranteed to increase your personal virtue quotient and in the long run that’s more important than saving a few dollars per gallon at the pump.
=======================
Have your own ideas on promoting fuel economy? Share them with us in our comments section.
One could emulate the Europeans and spend so much of the day at meals and in wine consumption that there is not much left for the burning of fossil fuels. The high price of gas there seems to encourage them in this pattern.