Back to Work - Bill Clinton [65]
Before we leave the transportation issue, I can’t help noting the biggest step in the right direction the United States has taken lately. In late July 2011, President Obama announced an agreement involving Ford, GM, Chrysler, and ten other manufacturers accounting for 90 percent of U.S. auto sales, the United Auto Workers, environmental groups, state officials, and his administration to increase the average fuel economy of auto fleets to 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025. When fully in place, the new standards will cut carbon pollution in half and reduce fuel consumption 40 percent. The cleaner engines, more efficient transmission systems, lighter materials, and more aerodynamic designs required to meet the goal will create 150,000 American jobs, reduce our oil use by more than three million barrels a day, and save Americans $80 billion a year at the pump.
There was no fighting or name-calling, so it was a one-day story. Did you miss it? Don’t miss the point. Conflict may work better in politics or in boosting the ratings of news programs, but cooperation works better in real life. Americans need victories in real life.
ONE THING THAT WOULD SPEED our much-needed transition to an energy strategy that produces more manufacturing jobs, lowers fuel bills, provides greater energy independence, and offers the possibility of averting the worst consequences of global warming is to have a large investor with enough market power to shape the future. The most obvious candidate is the U.S. military.
20. The military can and should do more to speed our energy transformation. Why? First, because the Pentagon, much to the chagrin of climate deniers in Congress, has recognized climate change as a threat to our national security. The Pentagon has conducted war games and ordered intelligence studies to determine the range of problems that rising temperatures, droughts, food shortages, melting glaciers, and high sea levels present to our security, and it is working on a range of possible responses to them. Second, because the federal government is America’s largest consumer of energy and the Department of Defense is responsible for 80 percent of it. And finally, because the military tries to make decisions based on evidence and has a proven capacity to solve problems in partnership with the private sector. The U.S. Army already has 126 renewable-energy projects under way.
I’m proud of the role that Hillary played in 2007, as a senator from New York and member of the Armed Services Committee, along with Senator John Warner, Republican of Virginia, a former secretary of the navy, in urging the Pentagon to assess the potential of climate change to threaten our security and to include its potential problems in making strategic plans. President Obama has supported this focus, and the Defense and State Departments have worked together to encourage Congress to adopt strong legislation to reduce the threats posed by global warming.
In a more immediate sense, the Pentagon also has a deep interest in proving that good energy policy can save money, because of the cuts in defense budgets the end of our involvements in Iraq and Afghanistan will bring and because more military-budget cuts will be necessary to stem the government’s long-term debt problem.
Secretary of the Army John McHugh, a former Republican congressman from New York, and Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus, a former Democratic governor of Mississippi, have been especially active in the search to save energy and get more of it from renewable resources. McHugh has set up a task force with a mandate to determine how the army can get 25 percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2025, with an investment of more than $7 billion in a clean-energy infrastructure.
There are some real opportunities to save money and enhance security. For example, shipping conventional fuel into