This is a only the beginning of a very long fight to deal with the monumental energy changes we must make. But at least things are under way in Washington.

It's good to see Senator Kerry's regular postings on environmental matters in the senate. Keep it up!

Bob Wilson

Unfortunately, this new energy bill is not ambitious enough on the fuel efficiency standards, and overly ambitious on the ethanol production.  

The changes to CAFE take too long to go into effect, and are not as demanding as they need to be to make a significant dent in reversing/mitigating climate change.

The fact that the US has so blindly rushed into ethanol is incredibly short-sighted.  We are simply trading one environmental harm (CO2 emissions from cars) for another (increasing the dead zone in the gulf of mexico, increasing CO2 emissions from peat forest destruction, etc).  

This compromised bill makes it even more clear to me that this country is on the wrong path (or at least moving way too slowly on the right path).  

It's time to ditch CAFE... it's about 30 years past time to ditch CAFE and use economic price instruments to reduce the consumption of gasoline.

So there's the first major problem with this bill - a complete brushoff of effective, efficient policies in exchange for draconian standards that will be irrelevant by the time 2020 rolls around anyway.  CAFE standards tend to lag the market.

Next problem - a provision in this bill against energy price gouging.  Thanks for wasting paper Congress.  This provision is utterly meaningless - have you guys defined "unconscionably excessive" prices?  

What is it with politicians and their complete misunderstanding of economics.  How in the world do they expect to reduce gas usage and keep prices low?  This is, like, high school stuff.

So the last major problem (though I'm sure there are more) - mandates for ethanol?  Seriously guys, this is strike three.

I disagree Laurence.  Perhaps more than some of us were there ... but my recollection is that CAFE came at the same time as a huge change in consumer perception.  It was a societal shift caused by a real oil shock.  People raced to abandon gas guzzlers, and to embrace small Japanese cars.

Evidence that my recollection is correct:

We had those crazy "voluntary import restrictions" from the Japanese makers to make sure people kept buying (larger) American cars

The vehicle retirement rate leapt, as people tried to get out from under those guzzlers.

If this had been legislation driven, and people had not been seeking those cars, they would have held on to that Big Iron.  The Japanese would not have had to limit their customers (what a hoot in retrospect).

So no, I count those 80's as a societal response, and that's what I expect again.

Thank you Senator for trying, but I betcha that the legislation will be watered until, again, the market leads.

At least it will lead if we have another "up year" or two for energy prices.

(I'd prefer "Feebates" on the window stickers ... but maybe those would just be watered too ... powerful interests.)

people should be able to drive what they need or want to -- but they should also have to pay for the costs they impose on others by doing so.  Increasing the gas tax would make that happen.

We usually refer to inflation-adjusted, or constant dollars, as real dollars.  By those, the national averages have just recently touched the 70/80s high.

We in California exceeded them for a while (the OC average hit $3.48/Gal per PriceBuddy).

The insidious thing really has been the repeated media theme that we "we still had not" exceeded those highs, when in California we had.

So I'm not sure I getcha.  We've barely hit those highs, and we did not do it as the same kind of spike (with gas lines) as in the old days.

The dollars you are looking at are not the inflation adjusted ones, and they are not (perhaps importantly) are not the income adjusted ones.

Laurence, you started by saying higher than the 70/80s, which would be the inflation thing.

If you were now addressing my comment ("we did not do it as the same kind of spike (with gas lines) as in the old days") then don't miss what I said.  I said "same kind" "with gas lines"

Odd/Even days anyone?

Laurence Aurbach has a point when he writes:

During the 1973 spike, the government tried to keep prices down with mandated rationing and windfall profits taxes. If people switched to more efficient cars because of government-caused lines, that seems to be another argument against the idea that demand for increased car efficiency was purely a free market societal response.

I recall those days, and the prevailing attitudes. The Limits to Growth study -- though overly simplistic -- had stimulated a big discussion on natural resources, and the world was worrying about energy, minerals and even food running short. After Nixon left office, we had Ford and Carter urging conservation. The national speed limit was lowered to 55 MPH. And yes, long lines at gas stations left an indelible impression.

Nowadays, the message seems to be: "Don't worry about high gas prices and shortages, we'll solve that with home-grown biofuels." And meanwhile, what CAFE standards exist get watered down by the "dual-fuel" loophole, which credits flex-fuel vehicles with much higher gas mileage than they actually obtain.

So yes, prices, and expectations of prices (compared with expectations of income) matter, but so do the messages from respected experts and political leaders. At the moment, those messages are mixed at best.

Actually, those help my argument.

If the CAFE reg was flawed, with SUVS gaps, and mileage still leapt earlier, in 1979 ... it had to be because of a social change.

That was price driven in part, but also because society at large bought into changed rules.  They acted, and regulated, based on their changed world-view.

It is silly to say that they changed their world-view, regulated themselves, and then acted in response to their new regulations ... because things DID NOT HAPPEN IN THAT ORDER.

So what we want now, what we want to shout for, is social change, not new CAFE rules with an umpty-ump year time horizon.  Those, as always, will lag what people are doing.

(The Transportation Safety Board is doing CYA)