Bryan Goodland

The United States continues to use an inordinate amount of the world’s natural resources. Everything from the coal we burn to light our homes, to the oil we consume in order to satisfy our need for an automobile in every home. This seemingly tireless consumption of oil remains a problem for two reasons: one, it increases our reliance on foreign powers, and two, it continues to negatively impact our environment. We have within our grasp the ability to turn all this around and curtail our need to consume once and for all.

The federal government mandated fuel efficiency standards, labeling the directive the Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards or CAFE. In essence, this mandate requires that automobile manufacturers maintain an average fuel efficiency rating for the line of automobiles they produce. This sounds like an excellent idea, until you really take a look at how the mandate works in the real world. Let’s take the Ford Motor Co., for instance. Ford continues to produce SUVs and even has behemoths like the Excursion in their lineup. On the other end of the spectrum they produce cars like the Escort, which rounds out their line.

CAFE takes the average of the entire line and uses that as the standard to which the companies are held. The problem with this is that an automobile manufacturer can make a car that gets seven miles to the gallon, as long as they also make one that gets forty or fifty miles per gallon, so their average fuel efficiency meets the government standard. The government is giving permission to the auto industry to build vehicles that get horrible gas mileage and allowing our natural resources to go up in smoke.

So how do we solve this problem? One solution is to raise the CAFE standards, thereby putting pressure on the auto industry to build more fuel efficient vehicles. Naysayers to this plan will point out that the industry should have the right to build whatever the market demands. The problem with this argument is that it is the industry itself that creates the demand. It seems implausible that there was a massive write-in campaign from Americans to build larger vehicles that only got 10 or 11 miles per gallon.

Others will claim that there are statistics which demonstrate that ever since the CAFE standards were passed, more Americans have died in automobile related accidents. Of course, the statistics probably don’t take into account the fact that there are more drivers on the road, in increasingly larger vehicles, and that they are being over-stressed by poorlydesigned highway systems which failed to leave room for rapid growth.

The new stricter standards may affect the pocketbooks of the average American, because new technology rarely comes cheap. The long-term results, however, make this initial cost worthwhile. Some of the benefits would be less dependence on foreign oil, a lessening of the environmental impact and savings for the consumer at the pump. Our demand for oil has been steadily rising and there appears to be no end in sight. Our focus should be on alternative fuel sources and creating technology which allows manufacturers to increase the fuel efficiency of current automobiles. If America has the money to put toward cloning sheep and developing ever more powerful weapons of war, it seems reasonable to assume that there might be funds available for increasing automobile technology.

With this plan, America could continue to purchase oil from foreign powers at the same rate it currently does, and begin to stockpile portions of it as the fuel efficiency of cars continues to rise. In this way we would not have to worry about the instability in the Middle East, and could use our reserves should such a condition occur. This would also allow us to maintain a relationship with these countries and hopefully enable American influence to work within the governments of these foreign powers. All of these things are possible and I think that the only question that remains to be answered is, when do we start?