Energy
Security: 55 mph and telecommuting?
Monday,
August 20, 2007
The
key to energy security?
According to Ed
Wallace of BusinessWeek, CAFE is not the best solution
to America's energy problems, simply because, even if we
raised CAFE to 50 mpg by 2020, it would still take decades
to replace our current fleet of automobiles with the new,
more fuel efficient fleet.
Thus, Wallace suggests lowering the speed limit to 55 mph
and encouraging telecommuting, particularly in the short
term.
While an interesting proposal, some of Wallace's numbers
seem very sketchy. His big savings via 55 mph is based
upon freeway commuters. I'm not sure about the rest of
America's urban areas, but the ability to hit 55 to, or
from, work in Los Angeles is almost impossible - negating
a huge aspect of Wallace's proposal.
On the other hand, telecommuting is a great idea, but it
seems almost impossible, especially as our economy moves
more and more towards servicing. Moreover, I can't see
America's employers embracing this idea in a massive
enough way. Furthermore, in today's high tech world, many
IT departments would probably not be too exited about
securing a massive telecommuting force, especially
considering how transitional our work force has become
these days.
In theory, Wallace's proposals sound good. In reality,
however, they would do little to solve America's energy
crisis and achieving them would probably require almost as
much time as a significant CAFE increase. Nonetheless, it
seems obvious that America needs both long term solutions,
such as CAFE, and near term solutions, such as
telecommuting - not one or the other.
Ultimately, however, Wallace does point out something very
important.
"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. Even legislated help, if it were to become
effective this week, would do little to help today's
working-class Americans deal with the now three-year rise
in the price of gasoline at all."
"That reality seems to have been overlooked both by
those debating (and lobbying) about raising the fuel
efficiency of our vehicles to 35 mpg (more or less) and by
those reporting it."
|
