Missing the Boat on Oil Security

Draft Op/Ed by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for the New York Times
February 12, 2003

President Bush is looking for his car keys in the wrong pocket. Caught squarely in the public outcry over America's deadly addiction to Middle East oil, the White House has latched on to hydrogen-powered fuel cell vehicles as the solution.

Research dollars are welcome since fuel cells promise America a safe, clean energy solution that uses renewables like wind and solar to extract hydrogen from water. However, in a perverse sop to Big Energy, the White House wants to extract hydrogen instead from coal and natural gas (without controlling carbon emissions) increasing global warming and fouling our landscape. Worse, the President wants to build a new generation of nuclear power plants specifically for hydrogen production.

Bush's hydrogen plan will further reduce our national commitment to renewables by stealing already anemic funding from federal solar and wind programs. Department of Energy personnel have already been told to plan redeployment of their budgets.

Fuel cells offer bright prospects but it will be 10 to 20 years before economical hydrogen vehicles meet pavement. Meanwhile, Americans are buying 17 million new cars, trucks and SUVs every year -- enough to keep the oil tankers sailing for decades. More than 300 million will hit the road before fuel cell cars appear in serious numbers. These are the vehicles we need to address. America has the technology today to make cars that get better mileage and pollute less. But the Bush administration has repeatedly teamed with Detroit to scuttle all efforts to deliver them; fighting tougher fuel economy standards, wedging open the SUV loophole and creating obscene tax incentives for Americans to buy the largest gas guzzlers. In an unprecedented move last week, administration lawyers joined General Motors and DaimlerChrysler in a federal lawsuit challenging a California law that rewards carmakers for selling low-emission, gasoline-electric hybrid vehicles.

Hybrids are just one of the proven, real-world technologies that could start saving oil right now. They can boost fuel economy 50 percent, and never need plugging in. Toyota and Honda make small hybrid sedans today, and will soon be putting the technology in bigger cars trucks and SUVs. Ford and GM are scrambling to follow.

Other technologies that can boost the fuel economy include more advanced transmissions; improved engine and valve train design; and better tires. Available now, these solutions won't be widely used until Washington gets serious about oil security.

We can't drill our way to oil security: America uses a quarter of the world's oil, but has only 3 percent of known reserves (compared with 65 percent in the Persian Gulf). Some of our other suppliers are shaky too: Consider Columbia and Venezuela, or the decay of Pemex, Mexico's state-owned oil monopoly.

Raising fuel economy to 40 mpg by 2012 would save nearly 2 million barrels every day; that's more than we imported from Saudi Arabia last year, and three times our Iraq imports. Boost that to 55 mpg by 2020, and daily savings grow to nearly 5 million barrels, almost twice our current Persian Gulf imports.

We have an oil security problem now. We have an air pollution problem now. And we have the technology to fix these problems now. It's time for the Bush Administration to stop asking Big Energy and Detroit what America can do for them and start asking what they can do for our country.