I was just watching Hardball (on MSNBC)  with Mike Barnacle (a Boston-guy) sitting in for Chris Matthews.  Towards the end of the show, Barnacle asks his guests (paraphrasing) “When is one of these presidential candidates going to get specific about their energy policy and when are they going to get the guts to tell the American people the truth.   That it is going to hurt and that we are going to have to stop driving so much.”  

This seems like a reasonable question to ask, but to ask it two days after Barack Obama gave his speech on energy and announced his formal energy platform either means he is, a.) not doing his homework (at all), or, b.) actively trying to keep people from learning about it by making obtuse statements that change the conversation away from substance and towards rebuttal.  He continued this pattern with the other main point he brought up, that Obama would tax the oil companies on their windfall profits.  That he would do this to help  provide $1000 energy rebates for families unable to afford gas or heating oil was barely touched on, but plenty of time was spent on the part about how Obama hates companies that make a profit.  Mike, you can change the subject all you want, but you’re from the northeast, and you probably know people personally who are not going to be able to pay their heating bills this winter.  There are lots of working families and people on fixed income that are being hurt by these price increases and one of our presidential candidates presented his ENERGY POLICY, and American’s deserve to know what it is and how he plans to pay for it - all without partisan talking points as the main focus.   I am equally interested in learning how Senator McCain is planning on addressing this short-term issue and the much larger issue of his long-term energy policy.

I urge you all to watch or read Senator Obama’s speech, as it is vitally important.  Early on he eloquently lays out the essence of his position with this statement:

When it comes to our economy, our security, and the very future of our planet, the choices we make in November and over the next few years will shape the next decade, if not the century. And central to all of these major challenges is the question of what we will do about our addiction to foreign oil.

OK, that is exactly what we want and need to hear.  What’s more important than our economy, our security and our planet?  The fact that energy policy can positively impact all three is why Green is going to help America get its Mojo back and is why I started Green Collar Media.  He makes it clear that there are some short term pains that need to be addressed due to the price spike and he makes the following suggestions:

1. Provide $1000 energy rebate to every working family in America (to be paid for by windfall profits tax, as mentioned earlier by Mr. Barnacle)
2. Increased domestic oil production
3. Not opening up new areas to drilling but making the oil companies drill on the 68 million acres they already have, or give up their leases to someone who will
4. Increasing shale oil extraction
5. Drilling in a portion of Alaska (not ANWR)
6. Releasing 70 Million barrels of oil from the strategic reserve to bring prices down quickly

He states, though, that these are short-term fixes and in no way address or solve our addiction to foreign oil which is so poisoning our nation.

…breaking our oil addiction is one of the greatest challenges our generation will ever face. It will take nothing less than a complete transformation of our economy. This transformation will be costly, and given the fiscal disaster we will inherit from the last Administration, it will likely require us to defer some other priorities.

It is also a transformation that will require more than just a few government programs. Energy independence will require an all-hands-on-deck effort from America — effort from our scientists and entrepreneurs; from businesses and from every American citizen. Factories will have to re-tool and re-design. Businesses will need to find ways to emit less carbon dioxide. All of us will need to buy more of the fuel-efficient cars built by this state, and find new ways to improve efficiency and save energy in our own homes and businesses.

This will not be easy. And it will not happen overnight. And if anyone tries to tell you otherwise, they are either fooling themselves or trying to fool you.

If that is not a presidential candidate telling us the truth, than I cannot imagine what that could possibly look like.  Mr. Barnacle, you owe this guy an apology.

He goes on to outline 3 main steps that he would take as president to help America succeed in meeting these challenges and taking advantage of the opportunities it will create:

1. Help American car companies create the next generation of electric-hybrid vehicles that get 150 miles to the gallon and get 1 Million of them on the road within six years.  To do this, he suggests investing in advance battery technology, leverage private sector funding to bring the products to market, but offer a $7000 tax rebate for purchasers of the new cars.
2. Require that 10% of our energy come from renewable sources by the end of his first term.  Tax breaks, incentives, funding for entrepreneurs…all the stuff you would expect, but hey…they work.
3. Start a nationwide conservation effort.  He wants America to use 15% less energy by the end of the next decade.  This is the easiest and most cost effective thing we can do and it will save us $130 Billion a year if we can pull it off.   He wants to make national building efficiency standards so that new buildings will be 50% more efficient within 4 years, and based on California’s success, change the ways that utilities get paid by compensating them on how much energy they save, not how much they sell.

This is a substantive and well thought out stance on the most important strategic decision of our time.   I’ll let Senator Obama’s optimistic words, which capture my own beliefs, sum up his policy.

But I know we can do this. We can do this because we are Americans. We do the improbable. We beat great odds. We rally together to meet whatever challenge stands in our way. That’s what we’ve always done — and it’s what we must do now. For the sake of our economy, our security, and the future of our planet, we must end the age of oil in our time.

Game On!  Senator McCain - you have your work cut out for you.

Following up on my post (rant) from a few weeks ago about the brilliant American auto industry and the troubles they are having - surprise, surprise - moving all of their behemoth SUV’s, there are some truly disturbing July numbers out.  GM lost $15.5 Billion in a quarter, Ford over $8 Billion, sales of SUV’s down over 40% from a year earlier.  Yikes.  Even though I’ve felt like the Big 3 had it coming, I do want the US auto industry to survive and reclaim its leadership position in innovation and design.

The front page article from the New York Times today outlines the sprint the Big 3 are in to see if they can completely revamp their offerings and business structure prior to running out of cash.  I hope they make it.

This is not really why I’m posting today, however.  There is another article I noticed while sitting on my front porch, reading the Times on my laptop, called Ditch the Gas Guzzler?  Well, Maybe Not Yet. that outlines the  financial reasons why, if you are an SUV or a truck owner, you may want to consider holding onto your big vehicle or even getting a new one (wow, can you get a deal now!).  It cites a number of factor to take into consideration, including trade in value, practicality of a small car for your needs, how much gas you would actually save compared to cost of trading in your vehicle for a rock bottom price, etc..

The genesis of the article is described like this:

Philip Reed, senior consumer advice editor at Edmunds.com, was on the tennis court a month ago when a friend asked him what he ought to do about his Ford Escape S.U.V. “I said, ‘You probably don’t want to hear this, but your best thing is to keep driving it,’ ” he said.

Mr. Reed and his colleagues huddled to come up with a way to help consumers do the math, and the result is the new “Gas Guzzler for Gas Sipper” trade-in calculator at edmunds.com/calculators/gas-guzzler.html.

Nowhere in the article does it encourage people to take carbon, or environmental impact, into consideration.  The calculator does not take this into consideration either.  I understand that it is the “Money” section of the paper, but it is nearly malfeasance in these times to not even mention this.  With all of the data they are gathering in this calculator, it would be an easy update to also allow people to get an idea of how they would be impacting their carbon footprint by trading in.

By the way, I am also not saying that trading down would make a positive carbon impact - or at least not for a long time.  There was a great article in Wired a few months ago that detailed the carbon ramifications of trading in your big car for a Prius.  Thier analysis?  Between building a new car, crushing and getting rid of the old one, combined with the actual carbon savings based  on how much you drive, you would not break even until you had put over 100,000 miles on the Prius.  Their suggestion is to buy a used car that gets decent mileage - it creates a much lower carbon footprint. 

What I am saying is that we need to have this kind of information at our fingertips whenever we make large decisions.  If we are going to ask our corporations to consistently make decisions with the triple-bottom-line in mind, then we - as consumers - need to do the same thing.

Hey Edmunds, update your calculator…we need all the information we can get.