President Bush's Hydrogen Car is Really Nothing More Than a Campaign Vehicle, Says National Environmental Trust 2/6/2003
From: Brandon MacGillis of National Environmental Trust 202-887-8833 or 202-320-9448 WASHINGTON, Feb. 6 -- The following is a statement by Philip Clapp, president, National Environmental Trust, on President Bush's "Freedom Car": Presidents have been making big new technology promises for 30 years -- whenever Middle East conflict and high oil imports coincide with upcoming elections. Richard Nixon launched Project Independence to make the US free of oil imports by 1980 and launched research to produce a pollution-free car by 1975. Jimmy Carter proposed billions of dollars of investment in new "synthetic fuel" technologies. Bill Clinton spent a few billion more on his "Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles" research program. Now we have George Bush's hydrogen car. None of them reduced US oil consumption by even one gallon or produced a single useful new technology. Research is the political solution when a president is unwilling to take on the auto manufacturers and require that they manufacture more fuel-efficient cars now. --- FOOTNOTE: -- President Richard M. Nixon, Message on the Environment to the Congress of the United States, February 10, 1970: "I am inaugurating a program to marshal both government and private research with the goal of producing an unconventionally powered virtually pollution free automobile within five years." Project Independence: Bill signing address, November 16, 1973. -- President Jimmy Carter, "The Crisis of Confidence" July 15, 1979. http://www.25yearsofenergy.gov/highlights_80.html -- September 29, 1993, White House press release announcing Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles. |