How to Solve Our Energy Issues—Fast

[RedEarth]

Wouldn't it be great if Congress really could legislate the U.S. out of its current energy problems? When you listen to the recent political debates, raising the fuel efficiency for new vehicles by some far-off future date sounds like a more-than-reasonable idea, provided you aren't in the car business. But the fact is that any proposed legislation of this kind can do absolutely nothing to solve our current or near-term oil problems.

........

Assuming the average of 15,000 miles driven per year, and assuming that this new and magical law gave a vehicle 25 miles to the gallon instead of its current 21, each driver would save 125 gallons of gasoline annually, or 2.4 gallons of gas per week, per car. But it's not magic. In fact, it's simple: Roll back the speed limits on our nation's highways.

Step One: Back off the Gas Pedal and No One Gets Hurt


Let's make the conservative estimate that only 20% of the 200-million-plus vehicles on the road today, or approximately 40 million, are primarily freeway drivers on their way to work and home in the suburbs: If we lowered the freeway speed limits back to 60 mph and rigidly enforced them, those 40 million vehicles alone would save 96,135,846 gallons of gasoline each and every week. That's 722,961 barrels of oil per week—100,000-plus barrels a day. (One barrel equals 42 U.S. gallons.)

Okay, maybe there aren't 40 million drivers hitting the open freeways at 75 mph every day; simply cut the numbers in half and we still save close to 45 million gallons of gas and 361,000 barrels of oil per week. We hear every night on the news how worried everyone is about oil supplies, or about problems with our refinery capacity, when even at the lowest numbers this single action could resolve our energy problems in seven working days.

How? The futures market for oil and gasoline would collapse, bringing prices back down to more reasonable levels. Families would quickly find their budgets would improve by $1,000 or more annually because they'd buy far less gasoline. Financially it's a win-win strategy for the entire nation—unless your money is tied up in petroleum futures or you enjoy that 80-mile drive to work.

http://www.businessweek.com/print/autos/content/aug2007/bw20070814_539070.htm

[OwnedByFerrets]

1. You will NEVER get a politician

to agree to this because it would be political suicide. Havent you noticed that Amerikans are more interested in their OWN time than in anything as frivilous as safety or saving our planet.:sarcasm:

[TheFarseer]

2. safety is no longer an issue

because we have 37 air bags standard in most new cars and daytime running lights because people are too damn stupid to know when it's dark out.

[The2ndWheel]

6. People don't own their time

We wouldn't have to get places so quickly if we did.

[Adsos Letter]

3. What was the effect when we lowered the speed limits

to 55 last time around?

[rurallib]

4. Pissed off motorists, especially truckers.

Troopers couldn't keep up with the demands to hand out tickets. They were stressed beyond the edge.

[RC]

5. More people falling a sleep at the wheel.

At 200 miles to your destination, 55 vs 75 is another hour of burning hydrocarbons.

[GliderGuider]

7. 100,000 barrels a day? Or maybe 50,000? Wow, what a saving!

I'm sorry, but that amounts to one quarter to one half of one percent of your oil consumption. That's down in the noise, it's measurement error, it's utterly insignificant. You use 22 million barrels of oil a day, for God's sake. 320 million gallons of gasoline a day. By all means lower speed limits, but to expect that it will somehow "solve" your energy issues let alone collapse the futures market is a fantasy.

Increasing the fuel efficiency of your vehicles by 50% would yield savings on the order of 2 million barrels a day. Now THAT would be worth doing.

[tinrobot]

8. The problem is people can't drive 55.

Sammy Hagar even wrote a song about it.