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Senators to begin work on energy measure
David Ivanovich, Houston Chronicle
Senate to begin work on measure seeking efficiency in everything from cars to dishwashers
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With consumers continuing to grumble about high gasoline prices, the Senate plans to take up an energy conservation package next week that would force automakers to churn out more fuel-efficient cars and require motorists to use more renewable fuels.
The Senate will begin work Monday on a bill that would outlaw price gouging at the gas pump, set new efficiency standards for products ranging from light bulbs to dishwashers and propel production of renewable fuels from new sources such as plant waste.
“Poll after poll shows that after Iraq, energy is at the top of Americans’ concerns,” noted Bill Wicker, a spokeman for Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M. “There’s a tremendous hunger out there to get something done on energy policy.”
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., cobbled the package together using bills from a number of committees.
(9 June 2007)
Energy efficient, but still using more
Mike Meyers, Minneapolis Star Tribune
Despite attempts at limiting power usage, Americans are using more electricity than ever to keep cool during the hottest days.
Minnesota state demographer Tom Gillaspy watches trends for a living. This summer, he’ll be plugged into one.
On the hottest days ahead, he’ll flip on a portable air conditioner that can be moved from room to room. Ten years ago, such appliances were unheard of. Now, they’re part of an energy paradox.
Many household appliances have become more efficient, using less electricity than ever to cool rooms, wash clothes and chill food. But the increasingly wired American home, where outlets are charging cell phones and iPods and powering multiple computers and big-screen TVs, is creating higher demand for power than was the case even a few years ago.
At last count, six of every 10 homes had a computer. In 1992, the number was one in five. Households that once had one TV now have two or three, some with screens four times as large as the typical television twenty years ago, and some requiring a lot of juice.
(10 June 2007)
Contributed by Mike Benz
Jevons Paradox rears its ugly head. -BA
To some, high gas prices have a silver lining
Mark Clayton, Christian Science Monitor
A sprinkling of experts and consumers welcome paying extra at the pump.
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When Jim Cunningham pulls into a gas station, his fondest hope is that prices will have risen. Instead of $3.25 a gallon, he’d rather pay, well, $4 a gallon – or more.
“I just like the positive impact high gas prices are having on public consciousness – like getting people to buy more fuel-efficient cars,” says the industrial-package designer in Denver, who spends $50 to fill a gas guzzler that he hopes to unload soon.
Hank Leukart, a Seattle travel writer, pays about four times more for gasoline today than he did nine years ago. But “I love high gas prices,” he wrote in a blog essay last year. In the long run, “high gas prices have so many good repercussions [in the form of less traffic, accidents, air pollution and a boost for renewable fuels] that the temporary loss of expendable income seems worth it.”
Such views aren’t limited to drivers. Across the American landscape, a sprinkling of economists, authors, bloggers, and pundits are making the case that there’s a silver lining to high gasoline prices. Instead of pain at the pump, they see payoffs: less traffic, fewer accidents, reduced air pollution, better efficiency, more reliance on renewable fuels, and less dependence on foreign oil.
While most motorists may wonder whether these iconoclasts are sitting at the wrong end of the tailpipe, they’re nevertheless reviving debate over a long-dormant idea – boosting federal gas taxes so that pump prices stay high. Permanently.
…Energy-security experts say a gas tax could in the long run replace some of the costs taxpayers already pay – but don’t see at the pump – to maintain military forces that keep global oil lanes open. Yet the gas-tax idea is a “third-rail” for most politicians, who fear nobody would support it.
Well, maybe not nobody. A February 2006 New York Times poll showed 85 percent of Americans opposed a gasoline tax, but 55 percent favored it if it would cut reliance on foreign oil, and 59 percent supported it if it would help curb global warming.
“It’s like tough love,” says Mr. Cunningham in Denver.
(11 June 2007)
