Government-Speak Meets “Miles per Gallon”

There’s English, and then there’s “government English.” Congress wanted much more in the way of mandating that car manufacturers build more fuel efficient cars than did the current administration. They passed a bill in November of 2007 providing a newest of measurable fleet mileage mandates (moving from the current fleet average for new cars of 27.5 MPG for cars/22 MPG for light trucks to 35 MPG for both cars and light trucks and SUVs by 2020) to be imposed on manufacturers. The fact that this is a long time line for a relatively modest improvement does not augur well for the priority we have placed on these issues, but wait, there’s more.

You should know how fleet mileage is measured. Miles per gallon… per gallon of what? The government looks at gasoline consumption, not fuel efficiency – across the designated manufactures’ vehicle output. So “flex-fuel” vehicles, capable of running partially on non-gasoline biofuel alternatives, even when there are almost no filling stations equipped to provide cars with products like bio-diesel, give an artificial boost to fleet averages! We really need to stop playing games and get down to business; failure to act sufficiently won’t result in an inconvenience; it will create a radical decline in the quality of our lives.

And then there is the Brazilian “energy independence” story – how are large nation with lots of cars made it work simply with ethanol-based fuel generated from sugar cane. Aside from the fact that the number of cars per person are a whole lot fewer in Brazil than in the U.S. or that sugar cane produces six times more ethanol than a comparable amount of corn (which also sucks huge amounts of water from aquifers that are running out of that precious substance), Brazil also has massive off-shore oil reserves making it one of the richest countries in the Americas! That’s another part of government English… spinning ain’t sinning!

I’m Peter Dekom and I approve this message.