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twotap
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Obama says fuel prices will change car habits
Sun May 25, 2008 12:43am EDTPost
.CHICAGO (Reuters) - Barack Obama said on Saturday Americans would start changing the kinds of cars they drive if gasoline prices continue to climb and said he owned a hybrid vehicle, though he doesn't drive it much.
Obama, an Illinois senator and the front-runner for his party's presidential nomination, has made fighting climate change a key issue of his campaign, and as fuel prices soar, he has repeatedly called on car makers to increase fuel efficiency standards.
Without specifically telling Americans to stop buying gas-guzzling sport utility vehicles, the Illinois senator said higher fuel prices would lead to a shift.
"We've seen that this quarter. People are changing their behavior and we've seen a slump in the sales of SUVs and big trucks and a drastic spike in cars both medium size and small," he told reporters on his campaign plane.
Obama put responsibility on car makers to make vehicles more fuel efficient.
"They've done a better job of investment than they have in the past. There's still more work to do, and the federal government should help them do it," he said.
Obama, who spends most of his time traveling around the country on a plane and in cars driven by his Secret Service agents, does have a car of his own that is environmentally friendly.
"These days I don't drive much," he said. "I bought a hybrid, but we keep it in the garage mostly."
(Reporting by Jeff Mason)
© Thomson Reuters 2008 All rights reserved
5 Comments So Far...
Help us advance this story. Provide relevant links or share your insights using our comment box. Please be considerate and help us by reporting any abuse you find. Reuters will delete comments that don't meet community standards.
Posted by kdpu3631
Report Abuse May 25, 2008 8:18 AM Some democrats and most US citizens are not as out of touch with reality as Obama. He is truly master of the obvious. What he fails to predict is that the anti-capitalist, anti-american, anti-nuclear, anti-domestic oil exploration democrats like him will soon be out of a job.Recommend (0)
Posted by thec1408
Report Abuse May 25, 2008 8:15 AM My first thought when I read the headline was also "What a genius". Mr. Obvious is sure getting a lot of credit for pointing out things people are already doing.Recommend (1)
Posted by dale1407
Report Abuse May 25, 2008 8:15 AM " I don't drive much" because I spend a lot of time in my private jet going to mesmerize my liberal base. Anyway my wife doesn't let me drive.Recommend (2)
Posted by kare1406
Report Abuse May 25, 2008 8:15 AM yes we seen a slump in sales of suv,s and trucks and soon we will see an increase of unemplyment.mabe we should see a drastic spike in people flying around the country talking about how he dose not drive and the hybred we cannot afford.its to bad i wont have enough gas to get poles to vote for him .(i wish i had a garage "mostly"Recommend (2)
Posted by rica6879
Report Abuse May 25, 2008 7:56 AM That Barry H. O'bama is a GENIUS! Nobody else has mentioned this or even predicted it. What next? The sky i sblue or the grass is green or the sun will come up tomorrow?
We out here in idiotville are waiting anxiously for his lordship's next great revelation! Amen.Recommend (3)
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"If you like your current healthcare you can keep it, Period"!!
Barack Hussein Obama--- multiple times. |
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Sun May 25, 2008 7:28 am |
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andi03
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| I like how people are starting to tout....buy hybrid!!! The unemployment rate really stinks right now, you think people can go out and afford to buy new vehicles? In one month, I will have NO car payments, my being "green" is conducive to driving less, hubby carpooling to work and not getting rid of my cars so they don't wind up in a scrap yard taking up space.....oy. |
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Build a bridge and get over it! |
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Sun May 25, 2008 7:35 am |
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FlintConservative
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quote:
twotap schreef:
"They've done a better job of investment than they have in the past. There's still more work to do, and the federal government should help them do it," he said.
I thought "corporate welfare" was bad? |
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Sun May 25, 2008 7:39 am |
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andi03
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| Maybe we should start construction of some of those big windmills and put them in the middle of Washington DC. There's enough wind from all of the politicians talking to generate power for the whole eastern seaboard. |
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Build a bridge and get over it! |
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Sun May 25, 2008 7:41 am |
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twotap
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| Since moving up here a few years back I have been averaging 6000 mi a year. So in reality my carbon footprint (whatever the hell that is) is probably much less than all the handwringin Hummer haters out there. I aint buying no Algore signature Baracko hypocrite approved overpriced sardinecan . |
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"If you like your current healthcare you can keep it, Period"!!
Barack Hussein Obama--- multiple times. |
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Sun May 25, 2008 7:48 am |
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FlintConservative
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quote:
andi03 schreef:
Maybe we should start construction of some of those big windmills and put them in the middle of Washington DC. There's enough wind from all of the politicians talking to generate power for the whole eastern seaboard.
Wind farm? Not in my backyard.
"Kennedy doesn't play by the rules
By Jeff Jacoby, Globe Columnist | May 7, 2006
IF THERE is one thing that Senator Edward Kennedy is adamant about, it is that government officials play by the rules.
''The vast majority of Americans share our commitment to basic fairness," he lectured his fellow senators last May, when Republicans were threatening to trigger the ''nuclear option" -- changing the Senate's rules to prevent judicial nominations from being filibustered. ''They agree that there must be fair rules, that we should not unilaterally abandon or break those rules in the middle of the game."
There was nothing clandestine about that no-filibuster threat. Senate Republicans had been discussing it publicly for more than two years. Nevertheless, the senator from Massachusetts blasted the idea. ''Every child," he thundered, ''knows that you don't change the rules in the middle of the game."
But, it turns out, Kennedy's antipathy to furtive rules changes and backroom power plays stops at the water's edge -- specifically, the waters of Nantucket Sound, which separates Cape Cod (where the Kennedy family has an oceanfront compound in Hyannis Port) from the islands of Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard. A shoal in the center of Nantucket Sound is where Cape Wind Associates hopes to build the nation's first offshore wind farm -- an array of 130 wind turbines capable of generating enough electricity to meet 75 percent of the Cape and Islands' energy needs, without burning any oil or emitting any pollution. The turbines would be miles from any coastal property, barely visible on the horizon. In fact, Cape Wind says they would be farther away from the nearest home than any other electricity generation project in Massachusetts.
But like a lot of well-to-do Cape and Islands landowners and sailing enthusiasts, Kennedy doesn't want to share his Atlantic playground with an energy facility, no matter how clean, green, and nearly unseen. Last month he secretly arranged for a poison-pill amendment, never debated in either house of Congress, to be slipped into an unrelated Coast Guard bill. It would give the governor of Massachusetts, who just happens to be a wind farm opponent, unilateral authority to veto the Cape Wind project.
When word of the amendment leaked out, environmentalists were appalled. The wind farm proposal is supported by the leading environmental organizations, and they never expected to be sandbagged by one of their legislative heroes. Even if Kennedy would prefer to see Cape Wind plant its windmills in somebody else's sailing grounds, he has always claimed to support the development of wind power (''I strongly support renewable energy, including wind energy, as a means of reducing our dependence on foreign oil and protecting the environment" -- Cape Cod Times, Aug. 8, 2003). And what happened to all those righteous words about not throwing out the rulebook in the middle of the game?
If ever a project and its promoters have ''played by the rules," Cape Wind has -- and in spades. Its plans have undergone more than four years of scrutiny by federal, state, and regional regulators, with another year or more of evaluations, hearings, and studies to come. At least 18 government bodies -- from the Army Corps of Engineers to the Environmental Protection Agency to the Massachusetts Coastal Zone Management Office -- have been involved in reviewing the wind farm proposal. Cape Wind has had to surmount an astonishing variety of regulatory and due-diligence hurdles. So far it has successfully met every one.
The list of permits, approvals, licenses, and reports that regulators are requiring Cape Wind to file or obtain would overload a library. First and foremost, there is the exhaustive environmental impact statement required under federal and state law, the first draft of which, 3,800 pages long, was released in November 2004. But there is also the Approval to Construct Jurisdictional Facilities from the Massachusetts Energy Facilities Siting Board. The Chapter 91 Waterways License from the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection. The General Stormwater Permit from the US Environmental Protection Agency. And too many more to to list here.
Cape Wind has invested millions of dollars in this project, and no small part of that cost has gone to dotting every legal ''i" and crossing every regulatory ''t." But if Kennedy gets his way, all of Cape Wind's time, money, and effort will have been for naught -- crushed in a naked abuse of political power. And it isn't only a Nantucket wind farm that will be dead, but a little more of the public's faith that the men and women it elects to office can be trusted to do the right thing.
''Every child knows that you don't change the rules in the middle of the game," Kennedy says. Grown senators are supposed to know it too."
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2006/05/07/kennedy_doesnt_play_by_the_rules/ |
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Sun May 25, 2008 7:52 am |
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