The recent "Executive Order: Strengthening Federal Environmental, Energy, and Transportation Management" orders federal fleets to do the impossible... for the moment.
When it orders the government to do something that is likely to take years to fulfill and in a completely different Administration.
Take "Executive Order: Strengthening Federal Environmental, Energy, and Transportation Management", which the president issued in the wake of the State of the Union address back in January.
If you just read the crawl on CNN or glance through the headlines on Google News, you might get the impression that Mr. Bush just ordered all Executive Branch agencies to begin buying hybrid cars. A closer read of the actual order indicates that isn't the case at all.
Here is an edited down version of what it says relevant to "hybrids".
By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, and to strengthen the environmental, energy, and transportation management of Federal agencies, it is hereby ordered as follows:
Section 1. Policy. It is the policy of the United States that Federal agencies conduct their environmental, transportation, and energy-related activities under the law in support of their respective missions in an environmentally, economically and fiscally sound, integrated, continuously improving, efficient, and sustainable manner.
(g) ensure that, if the agency operates a fleet of at least 20 motor vehicles, the agency, relative to agency baselines for fiscal year 2005, (i) reduces the fleet's total consumption of petroleum products by 2 percent annually through the end of fiscal year 2015, (ii) increases the total fuel consumption that is non-petroleum-based by 10 percent annually, and (iii) uses plug-in hybrid (PIH) vehicles when PIH vehicles are commercially available at a cost reasonably comparable, on the basis of life-cycle cost, to non-PIH vehicles..
Of course, the rub here is what is the definition of "reasonably comparable"? Also notice that there is no mention of the agencies being required to buy conventional hybrids, just plug-in hybrids or what is referred to as PIHs.
Considering that the only PIHs currently available are conversions that cost tens of thousands of dollars over non-PIH vehicles, this part of the order is, for the moment at at least, just more empty political posturing. It's good for a misleading headline or two like the CNN crawl today and the LA Times "Bush To Add Hybrids to Federal Fleet."
Then again, maybe we can't blame the White House entirely here, since had CNN and the LA Times actually bothered to read the order, they would have figured out how shabby their own reporting was.