Sometimes watching this Administration dismantle the country is like being tied up and forced to witness an intruder slowly strangling your parents.
Conserving oil is no longer an economic imperative for the U.S., the Trump administration declares in a major new policy statement that threatens to undermine decades of government campaigns for gas-thrifty cars and other conservation programs.
The reasoning behind this naked giveaway to the Petroleum industry is as shallow as it is twisted:
Growth of natural gas and other alternatives to petroleum has reduced the need for imported oil, which "in turn affects the need of the nation to conserve energy," the Energy Department said. It also cites the now decade-old fracking revolution that has unlocked U.S. shale oil reserves, giving "the United States more flexibility than in the past to use our oil resources with less concern."
So the “thinking” here is that development of sources of energy other than oil has suddenly allowed us to use as much oil as possible, the environment and all pollution standards be damned.
"It's like saying, 'I'm a big old fat guy, and food prices have dropped — it's time to start eating again,'" said Tom Kloza, longtime oil analyst with the Maryland-based Oil Price Information Service.
This move does absolutely nothing to help the American people, either. In addition to making Americans continuing slaves to fluctuating gas prices, the policy will actually end up causing more highway deaths as the number of drivers grows:
The proposal eventually would increase U.S. oil consumption by 500,000 barrels a day, the administration says. While Trump officials say the freeze would improve highway safety, documents released this month showed senior Environmental Protection Agency staffers calculate the administration's move would actually increase highway deaths.
Of course, in the long term this is simply signing the death warrant for the environment. Transportation is the single largest source of climate-changing greenhouse gas emissions. Under this administration however, the Executive arm of the United States government has quickly devolved into little more than a rubber stamp for absolutely anything the coal, oil or gas industries want. The impact on the air we breathe, or the horrendous climate future generations will be forced to endure as a result of these decisions are apparently not even worth considering anymore. And while we sign away our nation’s future, the rest of the developed world has already left us in its dust, reimagining and rebuilding their infrastructures with networks of high speed trains and energy-efficient vehicles.
Some people comfort themselves with the assumption that technology and industry will magically gravitate towards energy efficiency regardless of whatever short-sighted government policies are imposed by this administration. That ignores the bizarre circumstance that we have now--when industry has effectively become the government:
In June, for instance, the American Petroleum Institute and other industries wrote eight governors, promoting the dominance of the internal-combustion engine and questioning their states' incentives to consumers for electric cars.
Meanwhile, when asked why he was discouraging the spread of electric cars, this was explanation offered by Bill Wehrum, the assistant administrator of the EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation:
“People just don’t want to buy them.”
Wehrum is a former lawyer for the American Petroleum institute.