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Energy Action
President Bush huddled in the Oval Office today with several cabinet secretaries and gave them until the end of 2008 to come up with ways to comply with a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision requiring the federal government to regulate motor vehicle emissions.
“This is a complex legal and technical matter and it’s going to take time to fully resolve,” Bush said in a Rose Garden announcement.
The Environmental Protection Agency will work with the energy, transportation and agriculture departments to come up with regulations, Bush said.
The Supreme Court, in a 5-4 April decision, scolded the Bush administration’s inaction on global warming and ruled that greenhouse gases - such as carbon dioxide - are air pollutants and are subject to EPA regulation.
Administration officials said no decision has been made on whether the regulations would include increases in the CAFE standards that control vehicle gas mileage.
Democrats were not impressed by the Bush announcement.
Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass. and chairman of the select comittee on energy independence, said. “After six years of hemming and hawing on setting fuel economy standards, the president has suddenly discovered the regulatory powers he has had all along.”
“In effect, the president asked his agency heads to share ideas and come up with a plan that is due three weeks before he leaves office,” Markey said.
EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson says it usually takes 18-24 months to put EPA rules in place. That makes this effort an “expedited” process, he said.
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By Multimodalmama
May 14, 2007 4:18 PM | Link to this
Much about doing nothing.
By AMD
May 14, 2007 5:16 PM | Link to this
Wakeup call: According to “Who Killed the Electric Car”, on DVD and available through Netflix (trailers & commentary on You Tube), General Motors designed and leased a stunning, sleek, fast electricity-powered car long ago. Pressure from oil interests led them to recall the vehicles from people and stars who wanted very much to buy them, and they crushed and shredded nearly all of them amid protests from all sides. They used the excuse that there was no demand for the cars (go figure). The head of the organization regulating clean air standards (C.A.R.B.), having hired onto a company developing hydrogen cells 4 months previously, squelched arguments in favor of a 0 emissions policy on the books and scrapped it, effectively removing the legal incentive for auto manufacturers to produce 0 emissions vehicles like the “EV1”. The DVD documents a company called Gadget that overhauls gas cars and makes them into electrical vehicles for a reasonable price. The technology is, and has been, available for decades to eliminate the 16 pounds of C02 that is emitted into our air for every gallon of gas burned. Because of the obvious environmental crisis condition, the American people have the opportunity to awaken their leaders and the world to take back transportation and make it affordably clean. Please view “Who Killed the Electric Car” and look into Al Gore’s work on global warming and take whatever action you can as soon as possible, raising consciouness quickly. On You Tube.com there is a video under keywords “Who Killed the Electric Car” that shows one of the few remaining EV’s - the woman who owns it uses solar panels on her house to generate enough electricity to fuel her home, car, and even send back energy into the grid for profit. She pays a whopping $2 per month on electricity! In the DVD, they tell you where to find the latest solar technology, and interview an inventor at his manufacturing plant who dedicated his life to providing it.