Via RochesterTurning...
ABC News has a fact check piece about Obama's emphasis on keeping tire inflated as way to reduce oil consumption:
According to the U.S. Department of Energy, "every pound per square inch of tire underinflation wastes 4 million gallons of gas daily in the U.S." Survey information from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration shows that 27% of the cars on the road have a significantly under-inflated tire.
[....]
"So the production offset is more likely to approach 800 thousand barrels per day..."
(bold mine)
The estimate for the amount of oil that can be pumped out of ANWR?
Peak production from ANWR would be 780,000 barrels per day. But that couldn't be accomplished until 2020...
I believe that increasing CAFE standards and creating public service campaigns to encourage (and make it easy for) people to reduce their oil consumption is exactly the kind of thing the government should be doing right now. Remember -- there's no reason to believe that there is a single simple solution, a magic bullet as it were, to the energy crisis. Conservation plays an important role, research on alternative energy plays an important role, implementation of existing alternative technologies plays an important role.
To think that drilling will make all our problems go away is naive. I agree with Obama that expanded drilling as a small piece of a larger plan should be on the table if that's what it takes to get one done, but it's quite striking that something as simple as inflating your tires would likely have a larger and more immediate impact on oil prices than drilling in ANWR.