Three or more become a Congress by Amazonfemme, at amazonfemme 4:19 pm / 09 August 2005
The current Congress, in its latest attempt to prove Mr. Adams right, last week passed an energy bill that has almost nothing to do with energy, and almost everything to do with pork. As our oil consumption continues unabated, and gas prices have grown so unruly that you could feed an entire village in Niger with what it costs to fill your tank, the new legislation offers no useful solutions to our thorniest energy problems.
In fact, the bill that finally ended a decade of wrangling over energy issues does little to reduce our dependence on oil or provide relief from soaring fuel prices — and even less to expand renewable and alternative energy sources.
It does, however, provide great big juicy slabs of pork to energy companies, which not only get tax breaks and subsidies but also are exempted from certain environmental protection laws. And it delivers the bacon to House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's home town in the form of subsidies for research into deep-water oil and gas drilling.
On the plus side, Congress did excise the loathsome plan to drill for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. That’s one of the few bright spots in what can only be considered a boondoggle for energy companies and a thump on the head for conservationists.
But there's an increase in the tax break for consumers who buy hybrids - that's a good thing, isn't it? Er, not so much, according to National Geographic. It turns out hybrid cars are trading in their fuel efficiency for more "zoom zoom":
"Up until just about a year ago we thought we knew hybrids to be fuel-efficient, high-miles-per-gallon, moderately powered cars [like] the Honda Insight, Honda Civic Hybrid, and the Toyota Prius," said Bradley Berman, editor of HybridCars.com.
"Basically they were considered small, slow, and cheap."
Today eight different gasoline-electric hybrid consumer models are on U.S. roads, including performance sedans and luxury SUVs. That number is expected to more than double over the next two years as automakers increasingly use hybrid technology to woo not just conservationists but also mass-market consumers who value other features more highly than fuel efficiency.
Hybrid technology, like previous auto innovations, has been enlisted in the horsepower wars.
Leave it to the auto industry to subvert progressive technology to create muscle cars.
But hey, at least Daylight Saving Time will now last a month longer. Maybe those extra hours of daylight would best be put to use examining the infinite ways in which our national leadership continues to fail the environment and the citizens who inhabit it.
