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| 2006/1/19-21 [Transportation/Car/RoadHogs, Science/GlobalWarming] UID:41434 Activity:kinda low |
1/19 http://www.frugalmarketing.com/dtb/kennedy.shtml The initial CAFE fuel standards were set by Carter, then lowered later by Reagan. \_ I can't back this claim up, but I think fuel efficiency would be helped tremendously by ending welfare for the U.S. auto manufacturers. The public wants higher mileage. As long as the executives at U.S. auto manufacturers continue to live on the public dole, they have no motivation to give a shit about what the public wants, and shareholders and union workers have no motivation to revolt against the cockroaches who run their companies. I find it both sickening and amusing that so many so-called conservative republicans support welfare for auto manufacturers. \_ Oops, even the 1978 standards weren't set by Carter but by Congress: http://www.nhtsa.gov/cars/rules/CAFE/docs/162944_web.pdf "Conress itself set the standards for passenger cars, which rose from 18 miles per gallon in automobile model year (MY) 1978 to 27.5 mpg in MY 1985. As authorized by the act, the Department of Transportation (DOT) set standards for light trucks for model years 1979 through [munged by pdf->html, year lost, sorry]. The standards are current 27.5 mpg for passenger cars and 20.7 mpg for light trucks". Light trucks includes SUVs, etc, as we know. Report issued in 2001. \_ Garbage. I dismissed this link since it provides no facts or details. I restored the discussion below about this which has links with actual facts. Good effort though. CAFE predates Carter. \_ http://csua.org/u/eox "The rules for Corporate Average Fuel Economy, or CAFE standards, were first set for automobiles during the Carter years." I am waiting for your mea culpa. http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0412-11.htm "As the administration of President Jimmy Carter was winding down, Claybrook advanced a NHTSA notice that called for fuel efficiency standards to reach 48 mpg by 1995." \_ Mea this: http://www.ita.doc.gov/td/auto/cafe.html The Energy Policy Conservation Act, [EPCA] was enacted into law by Congress in 1975, and established Corporate Average Fuel Economy [CAFE] standards for passenger cars and light trucks. The Act was passed in response to the 1973-74 Arab oil embargo. The stated near-term goal was to double new car fuel economy by model year 1985. \_ http://www.energybulletin.net/9657.html "Carter insisted that U.S. automakers build more fuel-efficient cars, with a goal of 27.5 miles per gallon over the following decade - a requirement passed under Gerald Ford but put into force by Carter." You are wrong, but too stupid to realize it. \_ So the Ford admin created it and passed it but Carter should get credit for it and you think I'm the dumb one here. Okey dokey! Go Jimmy! Woot! You *can* credit him with saying "nucular" all the time. That's good for 15 minutes. good for 15 minutes. Your own quote backs what I'm saying: CAFE wasn't Carter's. \_ The law was passed before Carter, but Carter set the initial stringent standards, which were then raised during his adminstration. If we had followed those standards, we would use 25-35% less oil today. Reagan lowered those standards. If you bothered to actually read up on the topic, you would see that I am correct. \_ Correct about what exactly? The initial standards were pathetic. They were later ping ponged around and today it's 27.5 for cars and 20.5 for light trucks including most SUVs. I'd like to see a link for that 25% number you keep bandying about. And yeah, I've only got about a dozen links and pdfs open for this idiotic topic, most of them .gov sites. My research skills suck. If only I could have found some quality links from a Kennedy clansman. \_ Hey, are you dissing http://frugalmarketing.com? \_ If by ping ponging, you mean raised by Carter and then lowered by Reagan, you are correct. I think it was raised by 1 MPG by Bush I. Sierra club guy says we could have saved 3 to 4 M BBL/day, which is 15-20%, but I think it would be higher if we had the 48 MPG fleet average proposed by Carter and no SUV exemption, instead of our current 23 MPG. 2/3 our oil is spent on transportation, double fuel economy would mean that we would use half as much fuel on transportation, hence 25%. I need to get back to work, but you can be sure that I have researched this before. \_ Researched this at more high quality sites like http://frugalmarketing.com? Do you have quotes from <DEAD>spiffyliving.com<DEAD> too? \_ no, that is what google pulled up in a hurry. I have spent a lot longer researching this that you and you have not really bothered to actually bothered to. Read up on it and we can talk some more later. You just don't know what you are talking about. The vast majority of our oil today is burned in cars and SUVs. \_ And did you learn that from <DEAD>shinyobjects.com<DEAD>? How much of your heavy research did it take to figure out it takes more energy to move big, heavy objects? \_ The "holier than thou" thing is a really distasteful way to walk away. If you don't have the time and can't prove what you're saying when the links start flying, just step out and try again when you're prepared. "I'm smarter than you and know more than you but I'm too busy to prove it with links worth clicking on" isn't flying. Carter: bad President. And frankly even if CAFE was his idea and he chose extremely high standards and demonstrated the leadership required to make those standards stick, he would still have sucked as President, but at least then he'd have *one* positive thing to lay claim to for his 4 years. \_ Then you can save me the trouble and find something that says Carter wanted 48 and the current is 23. Sierra Club? They say a lot of things but aren't exactly an unbiased source. How about a .gov url instead of some axe grinders? \_ Sorry have to work. Later. \_ Or how about this? http://feinstein.senate.gov/booklets/CAFE_booklet.pdf "In 1975, Congress mandated separate Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE)... [These] requirements where passed with bipartisan support and signed into law by President Gerald Ford." A search for Carter in that pdf yields nothing. \_ Carter invented the internet.. \_ Pshaw! We all know Gore did that. \_ No, Al Gore invented the algorithm. It even bares his name, AlGore-ithm. \_ Carter invented the carts. He named his family after his invention. \_ I somehow doubt the current president will ever claim to have invented the bush, however. \_ Actually, Nixon did. The first IMPs were deployed in 1969. So what exactly did Carter do that was useful and noteworthy? |
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| www.frugalmarketing.com/dtb/kennedy.shtml Better Gas Mileage, Greater Security Kennedy shares how a small investment in conservation, implementing CAFE standards, would quickly reduce American demand for oil and our dependency on foreign oil. Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First, contains a great deal of other information about the interplay of marketing and social change, and ways to move a business toward both environmental and economic sustainablity. It has become clear to most Americans that maintaining our national security will require reducing our dependence on foreign oil. But Republicans are using the current crisis to push through a reckless energy agenda, including drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, that will not improve America's security. Even the conservative Cato Institute has called President Bush's claim that Arctic oil would reduce gas prices or American dependency on foreign oil "not just nonsense, but nonsense on stilts." There is a clear and pragmatic way to reduce our dependency fast. Since 40 percent of the oil used by America fuels light trucks and cars, an increase in corporate average fuel economy standards - called CAFE - could have a dramatic impact. In the late 1970's, President Jimmy Carter implemented CAFE standards to combat an oil shortage driven by policies of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. The standards raised fuel efficiency in American cars by 76 miles a gallon over six years, causing oil imports from the Persian Gulf to fall by 87 percent. Detroit, predictably, figured out how to build more fuel-efficient cars largely without reductions in size, comfort or power. The CAFE standards worked so well that they produced an oil glut by 1986. That's when the Reagan administration intervened to rescue America's domestic oil industry from gasoline price collapse. Ronald Reagan's rollback of CAFE standards caused America, in that year, to double oil imports from the Persian Gulf nations and to burn more oil than is in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. According to a recent report by Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute, if the United States had continued to conserve oil at the rate it did in the period from 1976 to 1985, it would no longer have needed Persian Gulf oil after 1985. Had we continued this wise course, we might not have had to fight the Persian Gulf war, and we would have insulated ourselves from price shocks in the international oil market. Fuel efficiency is a sound national energy policy, economic policy and foreign policy all wrapped into one. Every increase of one mile per gallon in auto fuel efficiency yields more oil than is in two Arctic National Wildlife Refuges. An improvement right now of 27 miles per gallon would eliminate our need for all Persian Gulf oil! Yet the Republican Congress in 1995 made it illegal for the Environmental Protection Agency even to study higher CAFE standards. The result is that America now has the worst energy efficiency in 20 years. If Congress is serious about ensuring our national security it should immediately pass legislation to raise fuel economy standards to 40 miles a gallon by 2012 and 55 by 2020. This would give automakers ample time to adjust their production. In the meantime, Congress should close the sport utility vehicle loophole by holding SUV's and minivans to the fuel economy standards for cars; Along with the other benefits, higher fuel economy standards could bring increased demand for efficient cars, leading to an increase in motor- vehicle-related jobs. We can also substantially cut gasoline consumption by requiring tire manufacturers to sell replacement tires that are as friction-free as tires on new cars. We missed a huge opportunity in the 1980's and 1990's to increase our fuel efficiency. If overall energy conservation options available in 1989 were implemented today, each year we would save 54 times the oil that would have been used from the Arctic that year, at a fraction of the price of drilling there. Mr Bush's Energy Security Act will actually make us more dependent on foreign oil, and it will place our hopes for national energy security in an insecure pipeline that could even become a terrorist target. There is no reason to wait 10 years for Arctic oil to come on line when a small investment in conservation would quickly reduce American demand for oil. is a lawyer for the Natural Resources Defense Council and president of the Waterkeeper Alliance. Principled Profit: Marketing That Puts People First, contains a great deal of other information about the interplay of marketing and social change, and ways to move a business toward both environmental and economic sustainablity. Click here to order Shel's books on cost-effective marketing This site is brought to you by Shel Horowitz, Director of Accurate Writing & More--bringing you marketing, writing, and career assistance since 1981. |
| csua.org/u/eox -> www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/transportation/july-dec05/fuelstandards_8-24.html The Bush administration proposed a new set of fuel efficiency standards for sport utility vehicles, minivans and pickup trucks. Following a background report, an expert discusses the details and the response of automakers and environmentalists. MAN: I'm probably going to have to let the Explorer go, which is the gas hog. the cost of filling up a sports utility vehicle, small truck or mini-van is higher than ever. And a long-running question has returned: Should these vehicles be required to get more miles to the gallon? Yesterday the Bush administration proposed the first revision of fuel economy standards for these popular vehicles. The rules for Corporate Average Fuel Economy, or CAFE standards, were first set for automobiles during the Carter years. Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta made the announcement. NORMAN MINETA: The old system squeezed all vehicles into a one standard fits all structure. And when the new CAFE is fully implemented in the year 2011, nearly all manufacturers will be required to produce more fuel efficient light trucks and will have to improve the fuel economy of the vehicles in all size categories. JEFFREY BROWN: Starting in 2008, mini-vans, light trucks and SUVs will be divided into six different categories depending on size. Once implemented, the smallest and lightest trucks would be required to increase efficiency to 28 miles a gallon. But the very largest and thirstiest vehicles, like the Hummer H-2, will not be affected by the new guidelines. Environmental groups said the plan is a start, but doesn't go nearly far enough. BRENDAN BELL: We will have a modest improvement out of this, but we're really in a race to cut our oil dependence. And today the Bush administration ran the first 100 yards and then they quit. JEFFREY BROWN: The Bush administration says the plan will save ten billion gallons of gasoline over a period of years. That's less than 10 percent of the 140 billion gallons Americans consumed last year alone. And to steer us through these new proposals, I'm joined by Alex Kaplun, reporter for Environment and Energy Daily. JEFFREY BROWN: I suppose it's no coincidence that this is happening as Americans see prices rising at the pump. This is something that's been in the works for a couple years now. The Bush administration indicated they might change the CAFE standards in 2003, but, you know, there certainly has been pressure in recent months and in the last couple of years to address gas prices, to address oil dependence so the administration really had to do something and take some kind of step to show that, you know, we're paying attention to this issue. JEFFREY BROWN: I've seen this -- every news report I read describes it as a complicated system being set up. So what's the simple way of explaining this six-tier system and why that would work better than what we have now? What we have now is a system where for each manufacturer all their light trucks, which is mini-vans, SUV's, pick-up trucks, even some station wagons, they all have to meet a certain number. What some of the manufacturers want and especially the American manufacturers was to break it up by the size of the vehicle; in this case it's going to be done by the length and width. The big factor is that American automakers say that the current system is unfair to them; it favors the Japanese automakers who make a lot of smaller light trucks, and they can sort of balance out their small light trucks with the big ones. And it's a lot easier for them to hit sort of an across-the-level benchmark than a broken apart system. JEFFREY BROWN: The American automakers sell more of the larger vehicles. For the American automakers really the big moneymaker for the last few years has been the really big SUV's, the really large pick-up trucks. For the Japanese automakers, it's kind of a combination. They certainly sell big SUV's, but they also sell a lot of smaller vehicles. ALEX KAPLUN: It changes things in that instead of having sort of everything fall under one guideline, the heavier trucks will have to meet one mileage standard. The lighter trucks and some of the station wagons will have to meet a much higher standard. Again, it really depends on what kind of vehicle you're producing now on where that vehicle needs to be in fuel efficiency. JEFFREY BROWN: Now, as we said, there was immediate criticism from environmental groups. The first one is that they don't think this goes far enough. They think fuel economy can be a lot tougher than it needs to be and that really what this is, is sort of a give-away to the automakers. Basically, a couple points increase is not sufficient considering where gas prices are and considering how much oil this country is using. Their second argument, and sort of the big objection to the system, is that with a six-tier approach what the automakers might do is that they might make some of their vehicles just a little bit bigger to get them into sort of a higher bracket so they can meet a lower fuel efficiency rating. You're really going to see a lot more bigger vehicles and some of the smaller vehicles are going to get squeezed out. JEFFREY BROWN: You mean this would actually push the automakers to in essence finding a loophole to make their car a little bit bigger and therefore have a slightly lower gas standard? I mean, that's kind of what the environmentalists are thinking will happen. An example that's been given a lot is the Subaru Outback. If you make it just a quarter of an inch longer and a quarter of an inch wider, which is basically unnoticeable to the consumer, it will get pushed into a whole new bracket and would not need to get the same fuel efficiency. JEFFREY BROWN: Have the car companies responded on that? ALEX KAPLUN: The car companies have sort of been vague on this whole proposal - they're saying that -- especially the American automakers -- that they like the idea. They think it's a more fair approach but they're going to use this 90-day comment period sort of to really examine the proposal to make their statement on it. JEFFREY BROWN: I gather there's an ongoing debate over whether the technology exists to make cars -- these kinds of vehicles more efficient and, if so, how much it would cost. You really get a lot of different answers depending on who you speak to. The automakers say, "Look, we can't make a car that's going to get 40 miles per gallon and have a lot of horsepower and be very safe. Or if we can make it, it will cost way more than any consumer is going to pay." Environmentalists counter with, "Well, some of the technology is out there. The automakers fight any kind of advancement, any kind of mandate and they're just not willing to go take the steps that they could take and boost fuel economy a significant amount with not a large price increase." It's one of the things depending on which side kind of spins the best that side seems to win. JEFFREY BROWN: Now, one thing that we pointed out here is that some of the largest vehicles -- the Hummer, the Ford Excursion -- are not affected by this. ALEX KAPLUN: It's been sort of a standard CAFE policy that vehicles above 8,500 pounds have not been regulated. One of the reasons that's been given is if you include the Hummer, which is not officially tested for fuel efficiency but people say it's gets something around 11 miles per gallon, if you include it in any kind of formula, it will push down the whole formula and for the whole fleet you are not going to be able to get the same CAFE number. One of the explanations I heard from a Transportation Department official is that you actually save more by not including the Hummer, setting a higher CAFE number than including the Hummer and sort of pushing the whole thing down. JEFFREY BROWN: Of course, there's another side to that, I suppose, which is that these are the precisely the vehicles that should be -- ALEX KAPLUN: Yes. I mean, one of the things environmentalists will say over and over is that these are the vehicles that are sort of the worst offenders and again with the six-tier system what you could have happen is that vehicles are already heavy. Maybe the automakers will push them abo... |
| www.commondreams.org/views04/0412-11.htm org Spinning Wheels - Our Continual Refusal to Raise CAFE Standards by Ralph Nader TS Elliot once wrote, "April is the cruelest month. " He wasn't referring to the unfilled promise of The New York Auto Show - which is featuring "advances" in automotive engineering this week at the Javits Convention Center in New York City. But anyone who has visited this event knows - the distance between the potential of fuel efficiency and the reality of fuel efficiency is as vast as it is cruel. The "Energy Policy Conservation Act," (EPCA) was enacted into law in 1975 and established Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards for passenger cars and light trucks. The goal of the EPCA was to double fuel economy by model year 1985. The CAFE standards started at a shamefully low level in 1978 when auto companies selling cars in the United States were first required to meet a meager 18 mile per gallon (mpg) auto fleet standard. In 1981 Joan Claybrook, now the President of Public Citizen, was the Administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). As the administration of President Jimmy Carter was winding down, Claybrook advanced a NHTSA notice that called for fuel efficiency standards to reach 48 mpg by 1995. Interestingly the notice pointed out that the auto industry itself said it could reach in excess of 30 mpg fuel economy by 1985 with GM saying it could do 33 mpg. The Reagan Administration didn't waste any time and withdrew the NHTSA notice just three months after it was issued. There was no improvement in the CAFE standards underthe Clinton Administration. The Bush/Cheney Energy plan of 2001 put off raising CAFE standards. In 2002, Senators John Kerry (D-MA), and John McCain (R-AZ) offered an amendment to the "National Fuel Savings and Security Act of 2002". The amendment called for fuel economy standards for cars and light trucks, beginning with model year 2005, to reach a combined average fuel economy standard of at least 36 miles per gallon by 2015. The pork barrel energy bill of 2003, didn't improve the fuel efficiency standards and was too offensive to consumer and environmental and taxpayer groups to even make it out of Congress. NHTSA has advocated raising fuel economy standards for sport utility vehicles (SUVs), minivans, and pickup trucks a whopping 15 mpg by 2007. But, the average fleet efficiency levels in new vehicles have slipped to the lowest level since 1980. Is the price of gasoline so low consumers don't mind driving gas guzzlers? At this price even the least frugal consumers have a real incentive to want fuel efficient automobiles. Does our country lack the engineering talent to produce fuel efficient vehicles? There are, after all, only 185 engineering schools with doctoral programs and only about 330 colleges and universities that offer bachelor's degree programs in engineering in the United States. Could it be that auto fuel efficiency is too small an item in our nation's energy mix? Not according to the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy - they note transportation accounts for 28 percent of US energy consumption and "over three-quarters of transportation energy use is by highway vehicles--60 percent by cars and light trucks (including minivans and sport utility vehicles)." Fuel efficiency standards are stuck in the mud because the auto industry is obstinate and because our elected officials are docile. For years, the US auto industry, and the government, have produced "promising prototype" cars which have gone nowhere. Toyota and Honda are starting to make inroads with their gas/electric Hybrid cars. It is time to update the CAFE standards, improve air pollution requirements and spark competition in the marketplace to stimulate the production of cars with greatly reduced environmental impacts. Congress should require the CAFE standard be raised to at least 45 mpg for cars and 35 mpg for light trucks, to be phased in over five years. The auto industry has had almost 20 years to gear up for this schedule, given their bragging about their Research & Development programs. Consumers will save money at the pump, the air we breathe will be cleaner, and the amount of oil we import will decrease. E-Mail This Article FAIR USE NOTICE This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 USC Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. |
| www.ita.doc.gov/td/auto/cafe.html The Act was passed in response to the 1973-74 Arab oil embargo. The stated near-term goal was to double new car fuel economy by model year 1985. The Energy Policy and Conservation Act of 1975 required passenger car and light truck with a gross vehicle weight rating (GVWR) of 8,500 lbs. or less manufactured for sale in the United States, to meet CAFE standards. The CAFE standards are applied on a fleet-wide basis for each manufacturer; For example, if a manufacturer produces 2 million cars in a particular model year, and its CAFE falls 05 mpg below the standard, it would be liable for a civil penalty of $50 million. Manufacturers earn "credits" for exceeding CAFE standards, and these credits can be used to offset fuel economy shortfalls in the three previous and/or three subsequent model years. Two vehicle fleets are defined for CAFE purposes: vehicles with 75 percent or more US/Canadian content are considered to be "domestics"; vehicles with less than 75 percent US/Canadian content are considered to be "imports". If a manufacturer has both "domestic" and "import" fleets, each fleet must comply separately with the CAFE standard. Therefore, there could be an incentive for a manufacturer to raise or lower US/Canadian content in order to "move" a vehicle from one fleet to the other in order to meet the standard for both fleets. The union was concerned that the Big-3 would start importing small fuel-efficient vehicles from overseas to raise their overall CAFE numbers. For the purpose of CAFE content is based on a value-added definition that includes operations within the US and Canada such as advertising, overhead, depreciation of plant and equipment. price of gasoline extremely low by historical standards we can expect consumers demand for more powerful, larger vehicles to continue to grow In April of 2003, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration promulgated a final rule establishing the average fuel economy standards for light trucks that will be manufactured in the 2005-2007 model years (MYs). In December of 2003 NHTSA issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking seeking comments on possible enhancements to the CAFE program that will further the move toward more fuel efficient vehicles while maintaining vehicle safety and the well being of the motor vehicle industry. NHTSA is looking to improve the structure of the CAFE program within existing legislative authority. |
| www.energybulletin.net/9657.html Washington- President Bush is telling Americans to go easy on energy, use carpools and "curtail nonessential travel" - an unusual moment for an administration that used to say it could meet growing energy demand by expanding supply, not consuming less. But this is not a Jimmy Carter, turn- down-the-thermostat, late-1970s moment. Carter wore a cardigan when asking Americans to bear a little discomfort in a time of severe oil price increases. Last Monday, Bush rode in a motorcade - two limousines, three utility vans, six SUVs and a medical truck - to the climate-controlled Department of Energy, where he appeared in a suit and tie behind a podium. Symbols aside, the former oilman who occupies the White House today shares a problem that plagued Carter, a former peanut farmer and naval nuclear engineer: How to solve an energy crunch in a nation utterly dependent on fossil fuel? Conservation is only a tiny part of Bush's answer, although on Monday, Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman will lay out what his office calls a comprehensive, national conservation campaign in the face of rising winter energy costs. In the past, Bush focused on promoting new nuclear power plants, better use of coal, new shipments of liquefied natural gas and further exploration of oil and gas in Alaska. Bush's energy problems stem largely from growing worldwide demand for limited supplies of oil and natural gas. The situation has grown worse because of the war in Iraq and, recently, hurricanes Katrina and Rita, which knocked out rigs in the Gulf Coast and hampered refineries. Carter faced a crisis from a combination of economic problems, failed policies of his predecessors and, finally, an Iranian revolution that cut access to some Middle Eastern oil. Carter met the problems by starting sweeping oil-reduction reforms, including creation of the Cabinet-level Department of Energy. He began spending millions of dollars researching alternative sources for electrical power, including solar power. He got utilities to cut their use of oil for electricity and ramp up their use of natural gas or coal. "Up until Carter, we were getting about 20 percent of our electricity from oil generation," said Jay Hakes, director of the Energy Information Administration under Carter and an authority on modern presidents and oil. He offered incentives for getting oil from shale, creating a boom initially in the Rockies - and a bust when it failed to be cost-effective. He offered deductions for using solar water heaters in homes and commercial buildings. "People in the upper-income bracket were always looking for tax cuts. They were going to build a house anyhow, so they were saying, 'Well let's look at this solar stuff and see what we can do,' " said Marc Giaccardo, a professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio who at the time was an Albuquerque architect. Carter even had solar collec tors installed on the White House grounds to heat the executive residence's water. The so lar panels at the White House eventually came down - and Reagan and his aides gutted the solar research program. "In June or July of 1981, on the bleakest day of my professional life, they descended on the Solar Energy Research Institute, fired about half of our staff and all of our contractors, including two people who went on to win Nobel prizes in other fields, and reduced our $130 million budget by $100 million," recalls Denis Hayes, the founder of Earth Day, who had been hired by Carter to spearhead the solar initiative. Reagan and Congress stopped aggressively pushing new auto efficiency standards, acceding to Detroit's desire to leave them at Carter-era levels. They let the solar tax benefit expire, and the nascent solar industry went belly- up. It was time to let the markets work their magic and stop all this government tinkering, Reagan and conservatives said. A number of environmentalists and conservationists say so. Although the corporate average fuel economy, or CAFE, standards already were saving 3 million barrels a day, "they could be saving us a further 3 million or 4 million barrels a day" if they had been ramped up, says Dan Becker, director of the Sierra Club's global-warming project. That would be enough to compensate for Katrina or for disruptions in supply from Venezuela and Nigeria in the last year or so, Becker says. "We could be saving more oil than we now import from the Persian Gulf had the government acted to raise the fuel economy." Every president since Carter has refused or been obstructed by Congress - which is lobbied by automakers and unions that fear losing jobs. When Americans want sheer size, they buy American, but when they want fuel efficiency, they tend to buy Japanese. Sherwood Boehlert introduced legislation in September that would require a 33 mile-per-gallon average for cars and SUVs in the next decade. While anything is possible, a majority in his party has previously rejected these measures. Meantime, the solar energy industry is hopeful - not because of anything that occurred in the White House after Carter, but because the 2005 energy bill, signed by Bush, will give up to $2,000 in tax credits for anyone installing solar energy in a home. The credits begin next January, although they will be available for only two years unless Congress extends them. Solar-energy champions say such a boost was needed 20 years ago, as the Carter tax credits were expiring. "The solar water heating industry instantly went from a billion-dollar industry to an industry that now installs, in the US, about 6,000 solar hot water heaters a year," said Noah Kaye, spokesman for the Solar Energy Industries Association. Had Reagan not squashed it, the research that Carter started could have triggered a substantial shift to solar, wind power and other renewable forms of energy - possibly providing as much as 25 percent of the nation's electricity supply, says Hayes, the Carter solar expert. "We were all aware of what in theory could happen by the year 2000, and it occasionally comes back and haunts us," Hayes said. That is all hypothetical, of course, because the theories never got a chance to run their course. Yet solid data exist on what happened after the free market- loving Reagan chopped Carter's programs to shreds. Oil prices dropped and stayed relatively stabile for two decades. Oil prices plunged in the early 80s after the Iranian crisis ended; after a worldwide recession sapped productivity (a less productive economy uses less fuel); The controls, limiting how high the cost of fossil fuel could go, had been in place since Richard Nixon used them in an effort to rein in inflation and dampen consumer prices during the Arab oil embargo. While the controls kept a lid on prices, they also prevented oil companies from earning enough to make them want to reinvest in more exploration and production. When theres a shortage of supply and you put in price controls, it makes the matter worse because it decreases incentives to produce more, Hakes said. And it decreases the incentives for drivers to cut back. He signed the order the day he came in, said Bob Slaughter, president of the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association. Soon prices began reflecting the laws of supply and demand. World affairs, be they labor strife in Venezuela, Iraqs invasion of Kuwait or the threat of higher prices from Middle Eastern countries, could drive prices higher. But renewed drilling in Texas, the new pipeline from Alaskas North Slope, good relations with foreign producers like Saudi Arabia and occasional siphoning of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (a Ford administration invention created for emergencies) tempered most crises. In fact, the price of petroleum got so low at one point, after the Saudis flooded the market in 1986, that some Texas oilmen went broke. Home heating oil and natural gas prices followed similar patterns. And with inexpensive and seemingly abundant energy, who needed solar? It was cheaper and more reliable to power a home with electricity from the local utility than to gamble that a $20,000 investment in solar panels might eventually pay off. Im not sure its a benefit to anybody to push a techno... |
| frugalmarketing.com Frugal marketing is the art and science of getting thelargest marketing results for the smallest expenditure. com as a resource for marketers, entrepreneurs, small business owners, and others interested in getting great results while lowering their marketing costs. Shel Horowitz Frugal marketing is the idea that you don't have to spend a lot of money to be an effective marketer. In fact, you'll often be a better marketer if you spend less. This article (and the one that follows) is a "living example" of one frugal marketing strategy: that you can write a page whose main goal is to be "found" when people look for certain terms--that you can get publicity on the Internet through a keyword-rich page, and still make it useful for a human reader. press releases, publicity on the Internet, newspaper and magazine articles, and Internet discussion groups come up over and over again. But making a page that's friendly to robotic spiders is only one small part of the mix. The frugal marketing approach includes free publicity in the media: Using press releases (news releases), pitch letters, and other strategies to get positive media coverage in newspaper and magazine articles (not to mention online publicity through the thousands of Internet publications) or free airtime on broadcast media. Internet discussion groups and mailing lists, one-to-one e-mail, seeding articles, and of course, an inexpensive but effective Internet domain and website. Frugal marketing means being a "guerrilla" at trade shows, walking the floor for contacts instead of exhibiting--and spending little or no money. The more you spend time at this site, the more you'll learn about making your marketing dollar work harder and stretch farther. Doesn't that sound like a sensible approach to marketing? If some of the notorious Internet dot-bombs had followed the principles of frugal marketing, they might still be around, enjoying a high ROI. com had used frugal marketing techniques more extensively, the company could have been profitable at least three years before it finally had a quarter "in the black," in the 4th quarter of 2001. In 1998, for instance, the company's marketing cost was $133 million; Just replacing 10% of its wildly inflated marketing budget with frugal methods would have turned that huge loss into a $4 million profit! Instead of such expensive strategies as banner ads, amazon could have been actively participating in online discussion groups. Amazon did use news releases, but was most successful only in getting coverage on the business page, rather than in newspaper and magazine articles that targeted the general reader--its real customer. Grassroots Marketing: Getting Noticed in a Noisy World (a Finalist for ForeWord Magazine's Book of the Year Award). Like the site (but in much more detail), the book tells you how to get free publicity through media coverage, Internet discussion groups, media you make and distribute yourself, and much more. mailing lists, free publicity in the media, and a guerrilla approach to such traditional marketing activities as advertising, direct mail and trade shows, that many businesses can grow and prosper with a ridiculously low marketing budget. In my book, I actually demonstrate how a business could succeed with a marketing budget as small as ten dollars. When the media contact you after you write a great news release and you see that free publicity in newspaper and magazine articles, you can just smile while others wonder how you did it. And learn how to be a marketing success with a minimalist budget. Shel Horowitz Press releases (you can also call them news releases) are a great tool for getting media coverage--my favorite kind of free publicity--and they should be part of every PR strategy. The majority of press releases go straight into the recycle bin--or simply get lost in the deluge of press materials. And some of the reason is that an amazing number of news releases break some of the basic rules. So be a successful media contact and get the free publicity. Set your news releases apart from the crowd--do it right! That, along with proper follow up, will boost your odds significantly. The crucial part is not so much in the structure of the release, but in the ingredients. Just as when you bake a cake, it needs flour, eggs, flavoring agents, and sweetener--but you can assemble them in thousands of different permutations within that basic "cake structure" So here's what you should have in your computer cupboard when sending a press release to try to get mentioned in newspaper and magazine articles, or to get free airtime on the radio: 1 A news hook--something to pin the story on that makes people want to read past the first couple of lines. You are competing with a huge number of inputs so yours has to be memorable. Otherwise--you get skipped over and someone else gets the free publicity. This is why I always ask my press release clients who will be reading it. Some audiences want something sexy or overdramatic, others want just the facts, others want a local or niche angle. The best release in the world is useless if the reporter doesn't have the tools to follow up. Likewise, complete info about the product or event (including ordering information, if appropriate) 5 A format that's accessible to the news media. Ideally, you'll see your exact words in print, in newspaper and magazine articles. It also means using only one side of the page, making it easy to read, and making sure it's addressed to the right department (at the right fax number or e-mail address). Other things are nice to have, but not essential: some sort of third-party validation, for example, or quotes from the principal person involved, or a summary. I can knock off an easy release (say, for a community happening) in about 20 minutes, and the papers will pick it up. For a project with a national audience and significantly more research involved, it still usually only takes me one to two hours. A fairly complete course in writing and distributing press releases that get the media to contact you or write newspaper and magazine articles about you is contained in my book, Grassroots Marketing: Getting Noticed in a Noisy World. |