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Legislative Action Message: June 2, 2006

Gasoline Prices Too High? Urge Congress to Raise Fuel Economy Standards

Rising fuel prices at the pump are on all of our minds these days, affecting how and where we travel and the price of groceries and other goods we buy that are transported from far away. However, the high fuel prices are merely a symptom of a more harmful disease -- U.S. oil addiction. The price of our addiction is far greater than the price we pay at the pump.

The full price also includes the cost of the Iraq war to topple a regime empowered and corrupted by its oil wealth; the costs of deploying U.S. military forces in the Persian Gulf and elsewhere to protect the oil sea lanes; the domestic, environmental, and public health costs due to air pollution from internal combustion engines; and the as yet untold costs of potentially harmful climate change due to the burning of fossil fuels. That’s too high a price.

It’s time to kick this costly, dangerous, unhealthy habit. Increasing the corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards for new vehicles is a proven way to help do this. Thanks to the standards Congress set during the oil crisis in 1975, the National Research Council estimates that today the U.S. is consuming about 2.8 million barrels of oil per day less than it would be consuming without the standards. Today, with existing, affordable technology, the U.S. could reduce its oil dependence even more.

The House is expected to debate raising the CAFE standards as early as next week (June 5-9). Reps. Sherwood Boehlert (NY) and Edward Markey (MA) have introduced legislation (H.R. 3762) that would set new standards of 33 miles per gallon (mpg) by 2016, up from the current 27.5 mpg average for passenger cars. H.R. 3762 is a step in the right direction, for which Reps. Boehlert and Markey and the other cosponsors should be commended. We at FCNL hope the House will pass it. However, we are concerned that this legislation does not go far enough soon enough given the many deepening security, economic, and environmental challenges posed by U.S. oil dependence. We believe Congress should set a much more ambitious goal of at least 40 mpg. Europe and Japan are already meeting this standard today!

Act Now

Encourage your representative to require the administration to increase the corporate average fuel economy standards to 40 mpg or more. As a first step, ask her or him to cosponsor the Boehlert/Markey bill, H.R. 3762. Congress should act now to reduce U.S. oil dependence as quickly as possible to address the many critical security, economic, and environmental challenges posed by U.S. oil dependence. If your representative is already a cosponsor, please express your thanks and ask her or him to take the next step by supporting average fuel efficiency of 40 mpg.

Find a sample message and contact your representative directly from FCNL’s website.

Find out if your representative is already a cosponsor of this bill.

Please forward this message to 10 of your friends who are also concerned about the high price of U.S. oil dependence.

Background

The U.S. is “addicted to oil,” and all of us are paying the price at the pump. Consumers are complaining that gas prices are too high, and members of Congress, facing elections in the fall, are scrambling to appear to be “doing something” about it.

But what can Congress do? Not much in the short term. High prices are merely a symptom of the underlying disease. Prices are high because people in the United States (and, increasingly, the rest of the world) are so dependent on oil. The U.S. is the largest consumer of oil in the world by far, and U.S. demand for oil continues to grow, accounting for 25 percent of the rise in global oil demand in 2005. Global supplies are barely keeping up. Prices are extremely sensitive to actual and feared supply disruptions due to accidents, routine refinery closures for needed maintenance, hurricanes, war, threats of war, sabotage, or civil unrest. Further, while the U.S. and others consume increasing amounts of the remaining global oil reserves, the pace and volume of new oil discoveries has fallen far behind the pace and volume of consumption.

Congress cannot do much about increasing domestic supplies. U.S. oil production has been declining overall since the 1970s. This trend is not likely to change much over the long term, even if Congress opens the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge or other public lands and off-shore areas to oil exploration. Most of the known conventional oil fields in the U.S. have passed peak production. Most of the easy oil has been pumped. The remaining oil will be more expensive and more difficult to get.

But Congress can do a lot to reduce demand. One way is to increase the corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards for new vehicles. The Union of Concerned Scientists estimates that increasing the CAFE standards to 33 mpg from the current standards of 27.5 mpg will reduce U.S. oil demand by 1.4 million barrels per day by 2020, save consumers $55 billion per year at the gas pump, create more jobs, and reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 244 million metric tons per year.

The European Union has set a goal of over 44 mpg by 2008 for new vehicles, including light trucks, up from 37 mpg in 2002; and Japan has set a goal of 48 mpg by 2010, up from 46 mpg in 2002. (Feng An and Amanda Sauer, “Comparison of Passenger Vehicle Fuel Economy and Greenhouse Gas Emission Standards Around the World,” Pew Center on Global Climate Change, 2004).

Increasing CAFE standards is just one of many ways Congress can act to reduce U.S. oil dependence. For more ideas, see the article “‘America Is Addicted to Oil’ But Where Is the 12-Step Plan?” in FCNL’s April 2006 newsletter.

Contacting Legislators

Contact your members of Congress through FCNL's web site.

Capitol Switchboard: 202-224-3121

Sen. ________
U.S. Senate
Washington, DC 20510

Rep. ________
U.S. House of Representatives
Washington, DC 20515

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