All about Oil

The President today put out a half-hearted speech about reducing the prices of gasoline for consumers. One part that resonated with me was reducing the massive tax breaks that we pay oil companies – but he only suggested we get rid of $2 billion in breaks for offshore drilling. That’s a start I suppose, but his energy bill from last year gave away over $12 billion to oil/gas/coal companies, so we’re far from progress.

The flip side of this was a reduction in environmental standards for gasoline production to last throughout the summer. The President has used catastrophes to promote his agenda before, as catalogued by Susan G at Daily Kos.

If the President truly wanted to reduce energy costs across the board, not just for gasoline, he could have done many things. The Democrats plan for energy independence by 2020 would be a huge way. Another idea would be increasing CAFÉ standards dramatically, which would require companies to innovate/use current technologies. Adding hybrid cars, diesel engines, or going toward smaller cars are all ways to do this without the government getting directly involved. What I like most about this is that it would encourage companies to drop gasoline-only versions of cars that have a hybrid counterpart (for example, no longer sell the Honda civic, but only the Honda civic hybrid). The CAFÉ standards function by requiring the average fuel economy of the entire fleet of cars to reach a certain goal, instead of mandating standards for each car.