Currently, the United States has the lowest government-mandated fuel economy minimums of any nation on the globe with restrictions in place at all. In less than a month, The People's Republic of China will increase its efficiency requirements to 43 mpg average for passenger cars and 21 mpg average for trucks/SUVs while the United States hovers at 27.5 mpg for cars and 20.7 mpg for trucks (SUVs and passenger vans under 10,000lbs are currently exempt from any standards higher than those of light trucks).



Hopefully you well-informed souls heard about the energy bill which made its way through the Legislature this week. As it passed muster in the House of Representatives with a vote of 235-181, it was touted as a clean energy breakthrough for America. Had it passed the in Senate, it would have required 15% of all energy supplied by utility corporations to be from renewable sources by 2020; it would have boosted the use of ethanol in 2022 to five times 2007 levels; and it would have imposed $13 billion in taxes on the 5 top oil corporations.



Then we get to the efficiency (CAFE Standards) increase. This bill would have increased car, truck and SUV minimum averages to 35 miles per gallon by 2020. WEAK! So Americans corporations have twelve years to make their cars as efficient as 2008 model year Chinese vehicles? That's absurd. As if the technology doesn't already exist to glean over 120 mpg from NON-hybrid engines...



So people, contact your senators. Make them understand that the bill is not too much for American corporations to stomach --- indeed, it's entirely too little.

So how about that oil spill? Given the entire breadth of the San Francisco shipping channel at that latitude (~2miles), what are the chances of the helmsman ramming the tiny fraction taken up by the Bay Bridge west span pile caps? Not so bloody high. Fool of a navigator...how much do you want to bet that this crash was caused by inebriation, as was the Valdez?



This spill is less than 1/175th the size of the Exxon Valdez spill. It occurred in the heart of a densely populated urban area, however, not the wilds of Alaska; and it happened in an area that has been the subject of billions of dollars of cleanup work in the last 25 years, an effort to recover from a harmful industrial past. So much for progress.



I am so glad that I enjoyed a full moonrise over the bay with friends recently, sand between our toes and wine in our bellies, because I won't be walking on that beach anytime soon.



So depressing.