Energy
ENERGY -- (Senate - January 24, 2007)
Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, last night in the State of the Union Address, President Bush, for the seventh year running, raised the issue of energy. I am glad he did because I think everybody across America understands we are in a dangerous position. We are entirely dependent upon imports from foreign countries when it comes to our energy needs and our economy.
It is true that we produce our own oil and gas in this country, but we don't produce enough to fuel our economy. So we find ourselves buying oil from countries far and wide across the globe. We find ourselves in positions where we are compromised sometimes by that dependence. Many of us have felt that the President's first goal or task should be to establish the reduction of our dependence upon foreign oil. I think that is a worthy goal and one I wish the President had quantified last night a little more specifically than he did.
The reason, of course, is if we can find a way to reduce dependence upon foreign oil, for example, we might have several positive impacts: first, not entangling ourselves in the foreign policy goals of countries we don't share many values with; second, it is good for our security interests to have sources of fuel that are reliable closer to home; third, of course, we are dealing with an environmental issue here. The more gasoline we burn to move a mile or two miles down the road, the more emissions and the more global warming; the more global warming, the more climate change and a disastrous environmental impact.
So many of us believe that though the President continues to refer to the problem, he has never quite moved us as we would like in the direction of a solution.
Last night, he said two things that were more encouraging. As I said, this is the seventh year the President has brought up the issue. He made a famous statement last year about America's addiction to oil. In the ensuing 12 months, we did little or nothing in Washington to address that addiction.
Assuming the same addiction today, the President said we should move toward alternative fuels, which I heartily support, not just biofuels, such as ethanol and biodiesel, but other alternative fuels that could make a big difference in the way we drive our cars, heat our homes, and fuel our businesses.
The second issue the President talked about, which is long overdue, is addressing the CAFE standards. These, of course, were standards created in 1975 by Congress. At the time, we knew we had a problem. The problem was obvious--that we had too much dependence on foreign oil and prices were going up. By today's standards, they were not going up that high, but by the standards of those days they were.
In addition, the cars and trucks we were driving were inefficient. In fact, the average miles per gallon in 1975 for cars and trucks was about 13, 14 miles per gallon. At that point, Congress worked up the courage, with the cooperation of the President, to set a new goal and said that in 10 years, we will virtually double the fuel efficiency of the cars and trucks in America.
The negotiations got underway, and they decided to exempt trucks--we will go after cars and we will go after the fleet average of cars.
It worked. In a span of 10 years, we went from 13 or 14 miles a gallon average mileage to 27, 28 miles a gallon. So we clearly showed that when given incentives and mandates, the automobile manufacturers could respond with a product that was more fuel efficient.
What happened after 1985, after we hit the 27, 28 miles a gallon average? We did nothing. For 21 straight years, we did nothing. What happened in addition, that little loophole we created for trucks, letting them off the hook, the SUVs drove right through it. They produced these big, heavy vehicles that became extremely popular with Americans. They classified them as trucks, and they had no requirements to be fuel efficient. So the overall use of gasoline continued to increase, and the overall efficiency of the cars and trucks we drive went down as more and more SUVs and trucks were built that were exempt from the CAFE standards. Twenty-one years passed and things got progressively worse as we imported more and more fuel--dramatically more and more fuel--to burn in cars and trucks that were significantly more inefficient than those we had in 1985.
I have tried, on the floor of this Senate, three different times to reimpose CAFE standards on cars and trucks, to close loopholes and to move us back in the direction of more efficient cars and trucks, and I failed every time. Maybe things have changed. I credit a lot of people for this new debate.
What troubled me last night was the President, I felt, acknowledged the energy issue but gave scant attention to the environmental aspect. It is true that most of us understand we are going through a climate change in America. If you have seen Al Gore's documentary ``An Inconvenient Truth,' he documents and brings the facts forward to make the argument that this climate change is changing the world we live in on a permanent basis.
I recently returned from an official trip with my colleagues to South America, where leaders in that region of the world said, when asked, they saw ample evidence of climate change--glacier melt and changes in things they thought would never change. We have seen it in America. We have seen it in the weather we find in different regions of our country, the extremes which we have witnessed and experienced.
My point is I hope we can take the President's invitation in his speech last night to the next level. I hope we can start talking about an energy policy that does make sense. The starting point ought to be a realistic goal for reducing our dependence on foreign oil. We ought to understand, if we can move forward with more efficient cars and trucks, give consumers in America more choices, that they will, given those choices, make the right choice, time and again.
Sadly, the production of these fuel-efficient cars has been led by foreign manufacturers and not by the United States. That has to come to an end.
I might say, although I support biofuels, ethanol, and biodiesel, although I believe flexible fuel vehicles are sensible for people to own and drive, it is not enough, and we shouldn't delude ourselves into believing it is enough. We need to move toward those hybrid vehicles that truly burn less fuel and move people in America to the places they need to go. We can do that, but we need to move in a sensible way.
Let me give two examples. There are two companies in my State of Illinois. One is Firefly. Firefly is a spinoff of Caterpillar Tractor company. It is an independent company that is trying to design a new battery for cars and trucks. The lead-acid battery, which most use today, is ancient and heavy and inefficient and in extreme temperatures doesn't work well. They are investing in research to find a new battery that is lighter and has a longer life. I don't know if theirs will be the breakthrough technology, but we need to encourage companies such as Firefly to develop the new batteries that can lead to better hybrid cars and more fuel efficiency.
Secondly, one of the biggest problems we have with fuel efficiency is the weight of the vehicle. If we can reduce the weight of the vehicle without compromising safety, we can get more fuel efficiency. I happen to have another company in Illinois--I am certainly proud of my State and what we do; these happen to be two companies relevant to the discussion--this company in Illinois has now a new titanium alloy that can be derived at a much lower cost.
Titanium holds the promise of being stronger than steel and lighter than aluminum. So this could be the answer to a car chassis that is safe and lighter. Combining those two items might offer a prospect for a vehicle in the future which would be much more fuel efficient.
Why aren't we promoting companies such as those companies? If we truly want to reach energy independence and energy inefficiency, we need to move beyond where we are today. We need to move the discussion. We need to say to automobile manufacturers that it isn't good enough to keep producing those SUVs and trucks, fuel-inefficient vehicles, and giving consumers fewer choices. It isn't enough to always come in second to the Japanese, when it comes to production of newer and forward looking technology. It isn't enough to let the airline and airplane industry look for these new alloys and new batteries and ignore their need for our automobile industry as well.
The President has pointed us in the right direction. I hope that now he will join us. We need to cooperate. We need to work together, Republicans and Democrats--give some ground, if necessary, but keep our eye on that goal to clean up this environment for our kids, reduce our dependence on foreign oil, push the kind of technology and innovation that will create great new American companies with great new American jobs that pay a decent income to those who work there.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
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