Something/Anything
It's Getting Hot in Herre

David Friedman of the Union of Concerned Scientists has a commentary piece--Driving America Off Oil--posted over at the Tom Paine compendium, which doesn't necessarily add anything new to the debate, but helps to focus the argument for improved fuel efficiency in the vehicles we're producing now (and in the near term until the next energy source is decided upon by governmental and market forces). It also provides a good framing opportunity.

Improving the efficiency of cars and trucks offers the greatest potential to reduce oil dependence in the near term. It can create hundreds of thousands of new jobs in the United States and save consumers billions on fuel. Improving vehicle efficiency is also essential to reducing the amount of land needed to generate the renewable hydrogen, cellulosic ethanol or renewable electricity that could power vehicles in decades to come.

The automobile industry has been investing in technologies that can safely and economically allow consumers to get more miles per gallon in cars, minivans, pickups and SUVs of all shapes and sizes. These technologies include efficient gasoline engines, more efficient transmissions, improved aerodynamics, high-strength steel and tires with lower rolling resistance. The majority of these technologies have no effect on vehicle safety, but some, such as high-strength steel and aluminum and unibody construction, could actually help make highways safer.

By adding only $600-$800 to the sticker price, automakers could offer consumers an SUV that gets the fuel economy of today’s family car. For $2,000 more, consumers could have an SUV that gets the fuel economy of a compact car. With gasoline at just two dollars per gallon, this SUV would save each driver more than $6,000 on fuel costs during the vehicle’s lifetime, and the technologies needed to get this SUV to more than 35 mpg would pay for themselves in less than four years.

Getting technologies like these into the fleet over the next 10 years and then tapping into the growing potential of hybrid cars and trucks could get us to the point of saving 5 million to 6 million barrels of oil per day by 2025. That would be enough of a reduction to stop the current growth in oil demand and hold us where we are today while we wait for the breakthroughs that are needed for clean and renewable alternatives to oil.

The problem is that automakers are not giving consumers these choices. Instead, for the past 20 years, similar technologies have been used to double horsepower and increase weight by 25 percent. As a result, the average fuel economy of new automobiles is lower today than it was 20 years ago.

The Bush administration recently proposed a change to the structure of fuel economy standards for SUVs, minivans and pickups. The administration’s proposal falls short of the technically feasible and economically practical levels described above by a factor of three. It also fails to include any increases for the cars that represent 50 percent of all light-duty automobiles sold today. Finally, the proposal does not close key loopholes in fuel economy regulations and may open up new ones.

The WaPo has an article that points to the importance of doing something (anything) now, rather than later to dull the effects of the coming wave of climate change misery:

Earth's warming climate is estimated to contribute to more than 150,000 deaths and 5 million illnesses each year, according to the World Health Organization, a toll that could double by 2030.

The data, being published today in the journal Nature, indicate that climate change is driving up rates of malaria, malnutrition and diarrhea throughout the world.
[...]
"Those most vulnerable to climate change are not the ones responsible for causing it," said the study's lead author, Jonathan Patz, a professor at the university's Gaylord Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies and its department of population health sciences. "Our energy-consumptive lifestyles are having lethal impacts on other people around the world, especially the poor."

The regions most at risk from climate change include the Asian and South American Pacific coasts, as well as the Indian Ocean coast and sub-Saharan Africa. Patz said that was because climate-sensitive diseases are more prevalent there and because those regions are most vulnerable to abrupt shifts in climate. Large cities are also likely to experience more severe health problems because they produce what scientists refer to as the urban "heat island" effect.

Just this week, WHO officials reported that warmer temperatures and heavy rain in South Asia have led to the worst outbreak of dengue fever there in years. The mosquito-borne illness, which is now beginning to subside, has infected 120,000 South Asians this year and killed at least 1,000, WHO said.