Glass Half Full?

Senate OKs fuel-economy increase, but drops more ambitious parts of energy bill

Posted at 4:41 PM on 13 Dec 2007

The Senate on Thursday overwhelmingly passed an energy bill that would raise auto fuel-economy standards to 35 miles per gallon by 2020 -- but only after a more ambitious version of the bill ran into a roadblock. The more ambitious version, which the House passed last week, got a thumbs-up from 59 senators -- a handful of Republicans as well as all of the Democrats except Mary Landrieu from oil-friendly Louisiana -- but that was still one vote shy of the 60 needed to get it past a threatened filibuster. To push the bill through, Democratic leaders in the Senate dropped provisions that would have required utilities to get 15 percent of their energy from renewables by 2020 and would have cut tax breaks and subsidies for oil companies. The revised bill now goes back to the House for approval; the White House says President Bush will sign it.

source: Detroit Free Press

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Comments: (4 comments)

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Correct me if I am wrong...

Does this mean that if any one of the presidential candidates had bothered to vote, the better bill would have passed?

That is a disgusting thought.

Even if there was a possibility that Bush would veto it, the significance of many voices in union is important.

NoPunProductions.com ~ AmericaTheGreen.org

by Greta at 7:17 AM on 14 Dec 2007

fuel bill

I am thoroughly disgusted by the democrats and their incessant whining about possible vetos and filibusters.Stand up and be counted and quit using whatmighthavebeens and push the proper bill through!You had all these grand promises that you fed us voters and really nothing has come of what you said to get elected.It is as I thought,business as usual.All talk and no action.
You say that the most important part of the bill passed......B.S..The most important part of the bill was the emphasis on renewable energy and the money was to come from taking back the grossly huge tax breaks that bush gave to his cronies in the oil industry.Make no mistake,renewable will come.Some oil companies(British Petroleum)are investing in renewables now.Maybe that is what bush and his cronies are waiting for,so they can control renewable energy as they do oil.Sad bunch of people those oil moguls.

Why not ask why!?

by usandthem at 12:06 PM on 14 Dec 2007

Democrats

Right on, usandthem! I do have one quibble with this piece, though--it says Landrieu "from oil-friendly Louisiana" was the only Democrat to vote against the good bill--but actually I think thgere were 3, including one of "my" senators, Byrd, from coal-friendly WV. Byrd consistently stands up against Bush when it comes to his evil wars and to protecting the Constitution. But then he undoes the good with this. The news from Bali is equally depressing, taken with the quotations of James Hansen and other climate scientists--one said "the Arctic is screaming" we may see an ice-free Atctic as soon as 2012, Hansen said we're going over a tipping point and if we don't ban coal burning now we will pass a "point of no return." Incremental progress is fine in normal situations--in this situation it likely means the extinction of our kind, or the human survivors struggling to keep going on a badly ravaged Earth.
We can't keep looking to the Democrats to give us the policy reform we desperately need. They show us over and over that they are another face of the same corporate monster--every two years they play Lucy-with-a-football to the public's Charlie Brown, telling us to kick it one more time, and THIS time they'll give us what the people want. Then they yank the ball away yet again and laugh as we land painfully on our backs. They will serve their donors and not their constituents until the end--when there are no more corporations because there are no more humans. We MUST get beyond looking to the Democrats, or imagining that we can work within this system--we must have a second American revolution, to restore what the first one won.

by mwildfire at 7:30 AM on 15 Dec 2007

Short rope, long cliff.

Getting halfway to safety doesn't exempt you from that nasty drop at the end. Passing half an energy policy doesn't make it rain in Atlanta. We're like Wile-e Coyote that doesn't know he's run off the edge yet.

Ooh, look!! There's the pResident Bush, er, the road runner with an anvil. Just for you.

Put the Carbon Back

by Pangolin at 7:41 AM on 15 Dec 2007

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