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Ted Stevens vs. Detroit

June 14, 2007

One of the most important conservation bills that Congress will consider this year is being pushed by ... Ted Stevens.

Yes, Senator Ted Stevens, the Alaska pork-barrel supremo who champions subsidized logging in the Tongass National Forest, oil wells in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and billion-dollar bridges to nowhere.

Conservationists loathe Ted Stevens. Ted Stevens loathes conservationists. The mutual antagonism is as immutable as a mathematical axiom.

Nevertheless, Stevens is sponsoring a bill to raise motor vehicle fuel efficiency standards to 40 miles per gallon by 2017. That's the kind of legislation that gets you feted by the Sierra Club and burned in effigy in Detroit.

What gives? Stevens has not gone green. He still has oily fish to fry on Alaska's North Slope. But Stevens also knows how to read political tea leaves in search of advantage for his agendas. His support for tougher fuel economy standards is a sign that their time has arrived.

The stars are aligning for stronger standards after years of complacency about oil dependence and resistance to any legislation that upsets recalcitrants within the auto industry and its unions.

Over the next few weeks, the Senate will debate a bill that would boost fuel economy standards to 35 miles per gallon by 2020. The bill would reduce oil consumption an estimated 5.4 percent from today's level by 2020 and 18 percent by 2030.

Cutting consumption is essential. Heavy oil dependence is a strategic liability. Rising demand and accidents of geology mean that an increasing share of oil production will come from the world's roughest neighborhoods in the years ahead.

High oil demand puts upward pressure on prices, which are set in a global market. Consequently, buying oil amounts to writing a check, payable in U.S. dollars, to a rogue's gallery of petro-regimes that run on palm grease and political extremism.

Even if every oil-producing regime was as well behaved as Sweden, however, oil is one of the main ingredients in the dangerous science experiment that mankind is performing on the Earth's only atmosphere.

Transportation accounts for 30 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. No plan for cutting those emissions can succeed without lowering oil consumption through a combination of improved fuel efficiency and substitute fuels.

But replacing gasoline in significant quantities will take time. That's where greater fuel efficiency comes in. Lowering oil consumption will not only help stabilize the oil market, dampen price pressures, and cut greenhouse gas emissions. It will give us the breathing space that we need to resolve cost, technical and infrastructure issues associated with substitute fuels such as cellulosic ethanol.

So, if Senator Stevens' political heft can help get a fuel economy bill passed into law, he will have done a favor for energy security, climate stability, and the U.S. economy.

Even though he's likely doing it for the wrong reasons. Stevens is looking for any leverage to pry open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling, which would take an act of Congress. His latest gambit is legislation to declare the refuge a "strategic petroleum ready reserve." It's a cleverly designed, two-step plan to get crude oil flowing from the refuge.

If Stevens thinks that jumping on the fuel economy bandwagon will provide the political leverage he's looking for, he will cheerfully stomp on the automakers and their tired arguments that meeting new standards is impossible. It’s not and numerous independent experts, including the National Research Council, have said so.

Conservationists will fight Stevens to keep the refuge closed, rightfully arguing that his Arctic drilling hobby horse would do nothing to wean the U.S. from its dangerous addiction to oil. But raising fuel economy standards would. If Stevens is instrumental in making that happen, credit should be given where credit is due.