...are poles apart. All the outwardly concern for the environment, by the American politicians, is empty rhetoric when juxtaposed with their policies.
Bush seems to believe that India and China are equally guilty of polluting the environment as the Americans. We have proven that bunk in the previous posts. Further, the American policies actually favor the inefficient and polluting.
The US is a country of automobiles. The cars there are highly inefficient and burn a lot of gas. The mileage efficiency mandate has remained stagnant since the early seventies. As a result the average mileage of today's cars in the US is the same as it was in the seventies. Surely there have been advancements in technology which could be put to use in increasing the mileage on a car.
In the mid nineties, electric cars began to appear on American roads. These cars were quickly becoming popular and were actually better than the gas burning cars. They were threatening to kill the gasoline burning ones. The electric cars were being offered to the people to meet the California Air Resources Board (CARB) mandates to reduce emissions in the state. However the oil lobby felt threatened and began a counter attack on the electric car programs. It bought out the CARB, the car companies argued that it was impossible to meet the emission mandates prompting the CARB to relax them and in effect killing the future of electric cars. This attack on the zero emission electric cars had the backing of the federal government under Bush, not surprising knowing his oil connections. To completely kill the electric car program, Bush announced investment in fuel cell technology which we all know is not viable. The fuel cell technology is four times as inefficient as the electric cars. The documentary "Who Killed the Electric Car?" discusses this pretty well.
When there is still a lot of money to be made on oil, until it runs out, the oil lobby will continue to squash all alternative developments that threaten it. And the American politicians are equally involved in this. Until the American leaders continue to do this, they are not going to sound credible at all. Bring back the electric car; it is the best thing to do. Kick the oil habit.
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