Vodkapundit is, ahem, a little younger than I and he’s definitely put himself on the side of youthful speed this morning in making fun of my contemporary Hillary Clinton for suggesting a return to the 55-mile speed limit. And I’d certainly agree with Will Collier that this is unlikely to win Hillary many votes. But I would humbly suggest that there are a lot of votes to be garnered in the area of oil conservation. I can give you three reasons: Iran, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela. Every time you “Fill ‘er up!” and express your American born-to-run thing, a lot of people (Will included, I would imagine) are remembering in the back of their minds whose pockets they’re lining – as creepier a collection of greedy and dangerous theocrats and mafiosi as currently exist on the planet. No matter how you stand on global warming this should disturb you.
So if I were running for President in the near future, I’d be thinking big time about energy conservation and alternative fuels because it cuts across party and ideological lines. Some favor it for ecological reasons; others out of committment to the war on terror. Some even out of both. It’s a win-win-win. (via PJ)
Roger,
Absolutely, another tax…
Anyone have the state revenue figures from speeding tickets when the speed limit was 55 mph? I wouldn’t bet the farm, but I’d imagine they were an excellent source of revenue…
But, squeezing revenue from the Sheikh’s… Now that I can get on board with. Wouldn’t it be loverly for them to come begging for cash?
Small correction, the post you’re referring to was written by Will Collier, not Stephen.
There are indeed a lot of areas where we could use some leadership on energy conservation and creation: for example, more intelligent traffic-control systems could save something like 5% of car & truck fuel, basically substituting silicon for oil.
However, there’s a lot of misleading stuff floating around on alternative energy. WashPost had a front-page article on ethanol, which stated that ordinary gasoline is “weaker” than ethanol (actually, E85 ethanol has about 10% less energy than equivalent gasoline) and that potential supplies of ethanol are “virtually unlimited” (actually, these supplies are constrained by land availability, also possibly water availability.) The article also failed to mention that ethanol cannot transit today’s pipelines and hence must be transported by rail or barge.
I think ethanol probably has a lot of potential, but this kind of shallow reporting is not conducive either to good public policy or to good individual investment decisions.
I’m not quite sure if you are endorsing this proposal or just pointing out that it would save some oil and get a few votes. I think there are better ways to conserve, like requiring higher gas mileage from auto makers. I don’t think anyone who has had to make multiple trips across Nebraska would ever endorse a lower speed limit. And finally, as a one time truck driver, I can tell you that lower speed limits have a significant impact on truckers’ incomes.
You know, I’m in the oilfield, and the most irritating thing about this is that it comes on the wake of the vote to not allow oil drilling in the continental shelf anyplace besides Louisiana and Texas.
Hillary has had lots of chances to do something about oil imports that she’s passed up.
This measure is just to create the illusion of caring.
pjw,to be clear, I don’t care much about the proposal one way or another. What I do care about is this – people get serious about winning the war on terror on the home front. Getting money out of the hands of those religiofascists is mandatory. You’re not serious if you can’t make THAT MUCH sacrifice. People did in WWII and this is just as important. Clear enough?
Roger, Roger, Roger:
Real, viable alternative energy(as opposed to ethanol, wind and solar) is a desirable goal, but a 55 mph speed limit can only be taken seriously by those who never drive outside urban areas. By far the best fuel conservation measure is for the government to butt out and let the market work its magic. My Focus gets 30 mpg at 80, while my F-150 gets 19 at 55. Guess which one I drive most of the time.
There are hundreds of fuel saving measures, small and large, other than forcing everyone to drive at sub-optimal speeds, that will come into play over time as people begin to pay the higher cost of driving on three dollar and higher per gallon gas.
But your real name is Mr. Earl?
The thing that gripes me is that all of these ideas are bandied about by people who don’t know anything technical about the subjects.
For example, slow down the cars and your roads can carry fewer vehicles per hour. Will slowing to 55 lead to increased congestion and thus actually waste fuel? I don’t know, but someone should be asking a traffic engineer, not Hillary bloody Clinton.
The comment above about pipelines is good. I live in Austin, Texas. The public doesn’t know it, but nearly ALL of the gasoline that comes to Austin comes through ONE pipeline – to a terminal in east Austin. Adding new grades of gasoline (such as ethanol-laced gas) adds considerably to the complexity of running that terminal. They’ll need new tanks to store the new product. The delivery trucks will have to make more runs. All sorts of things.
Politicians should only be setting policy here: “we want to use less oil”. When they go on to micro-manage HOW we go about it, they will almost certainly do things that either don’t work or actually waste energy rather than save it.
Politicians are never a good substitute for real engineering.
Hillary Clinton for suggesting a return to the 55-mile speed limit.
I doubt Hillary has driven her own car anywhere in a long time and wonder whether she has ever driven in West Texas….or Montana or Nevada. In W. Texas we play high school football teams in games that are over 300 miles away. Try getting there with you sanity in tact at 55 mph. In fact in some counties in W. Texas the speed limit is bein raised to 80 mph.
Hi, Roger, appreciate the link.
While I certainly agree that sending money via oil sales to Bad Guys of all stripes is a bad thing, and I don’t have a beef with conservation as a good in and of itself, I definitely *do* have a problem with the idea that the west in general and Americans in particular ought to (or could even be able to) resolve the whole thing by simply using less energy.
Reacting to fascists who want to curtail our freedoms by, er, curtailing our freedoms doesn’t strike me as a great idea. There are lots and lots of other things we can and should do that would reduce the money going to yahoos like Chavez and Prince [insert geriatric Saudi of the moment], and would at the very least maintain (if not improve) the standard of living we’ve busted our collective humps to achieve. Drill in Alaska. Drill off Florida. Drill off California. Build new nuclear plants. Standardize on a small number of fuel mixtures, and ban overactive state legislatures from messing around with them. By all means, look at hydrogen ideas, but don’t kid yourself–there’s no such thing as a free lunch (see also Ethanol and other plant-based options, which just don’t scale enough for large scale use–Google Den Beste’s essay from a while back if you don’t believe me). All that stuff (and others) will require some sacrifice, but they’ll make a much better difference than forcing people to poke along at early-20th-century speeds in paper-thin Matchbox cars.
The old commercial jingle was right: It’s not just your car. It’s your freedom.
Roger:
Good topic.
I looked at a Honda Fit the other day; 31/38, an European car here in the US. Small, tight, lotsa of headroom. Wow.
I live in an urban area where traffic is horrid. Detroit has been foisting on Americans gas guzzlers for years. The SUV craze is a disgrace. I have no sympathy for people who drive them or the Chevy Suburbans, Ford Explorers, Dodge Durangos, Lexuses, Pilots, Cayennes, etc. etc. Raise the gas standards and make Detroit realize the consequences of our over dependence on foreign oil. There is where to start.
Jedrury,
So you are against freedom of choice in the marketplace, hmmmm? Would you care to explain to me exactly HOW Detroit “foisted” those SUVs on all those “unsuspecting fools”?
There has been an ample supply of fuel effiecent cars for decades so there is no reason, other than personal choice, for one driving an SUV.
Oh, and BTW, I hate the suckers as much as anyone…I just like freedom even more.
On a related topic…
Have the Greenies been saying much about China drilling for oil ~45 miles off Key West, courtesy of that cigar sucking commie scum to our south? They certainly seem to have a lot to say about the US drilling off the US coast.
A couple points:
1. 55mph is unlikely to represent the peak-efficiency speed of most vehicles on the road today
2. Speed limits should be set for safety, period, not nanny-state concerns.
3. Fuel efficiency increases will not work fast enough to reduce world dependence on middle eastern oil
4. Reducing the oil-based income of middle eastern states will NOT have a positive effect on the war on terror. Consider that oil-based revenues per-capita have dropped substantially in the middle east over the past few decades (due to rising populations and decreasing oil prices) and yet international terrorism has grown increasingly worse.
With Congress setting 85% of the outer contenintal shelf off limits to drilling, this ploy by Hill is just so much caca. It serves two political purposes.
1. It shifts the focus away from federal supply restrictions.
2. It asks those in wide open (red) counties to do the actual sacrifice while urban blues can feel good that the 55mph applies to everyone.
If a 55mph limit applied to trucking, then it would increase the number of trucks required to carry the same goods, with resultant energy use for manufacturing those trucks (and lost productivity due to the requirement for more drivers)–also, inventory carrying costs for the goods being shipped would increase.
If the limit were *not* applied to trucking, then obvious safety issue due to different speeds in the same traffic stream.
There are more nuances in heaven and on earth, Hillary, than are dreamed of in your philosophy.
No sale for 55. That does not mean I’m against conservation. I own two Honda Civics for my own selfish reasons, but I have no objection to anyone else driving what they want. I don’t pay to fill their tanks.
Who prevented drilling in ANWR and off the Florida coast? Who voted for the botique blends? Ethanol? Who allows the frivolous lawsuits preventing new refineries being built in the US?
Hillary the fascist can stuff it, along with the rest of the imperialists in DC.
DAN M NAILED IT ALREADY -
Dan we ain’t squeezing any Sheikh by lowering the limit to 55mph. Have you ever heard of China and India? and their growth rate? We’yre long past the largest consumer of oil.
They raised the speed limit to 65mph in many places in NY and guess what the Trooper’s Union is concerned about the new hiring of Troopers, who usually pay their own salary in tickets and then plenty more.
I drive 30-40,000 miles per year and now that it’s 65 I NEVER get tickets on the highways any longer. I drive about 75mph and that’s fine. Driving 68 and below is torturous.
The tax $$$$ to the state and local municpalities is astounding, I don’t need to see any figures.
Mike
55 is utterly, laughably impractical between the 95th meridian and the Sierra Nevada/Cascades.
Mike_Nargizian,
you said – “…we ain’t squeezing any Sheikh by lowering the limit to 55mph”.
You are right, but I’m pretty much fed up with our lack of seriousness about oil supply/demand. To reduce the Sheikhs pocket change won’t solve our little muslim issue. But, an outright Manhattan Project-scale effort at alternative fuel (anything that is NOT Oil) will either escalate Jihad or drain it of funding. I think either is preferrable to the slow “death” we are experiencing now.
Yes, I know there are issues associated with alternative fuels, but to fight over a resource that is dwindling and used as a club in a war against us is foolish. Especially in a country that has some of the best engineering minds in the world.
The oil companies? If it is bio-fuel, Who has the cracking plants and distribution? They will probably reduce in size, but will be more profitable (in the long run) due to stability of supply. But, then again who in this capatilistic country cares about them? Well, me for one.. You can’t have a government directive kill an industry and expect anyone else to pony up money for another. I wonder how much foreign investment capital is moving into Venezuela right now? The oil companies need to be included in this. They probably are the single best source for plant engineering in the world.
If it’s “other”, let it be “other”. Let nuclear plants sprout up everywhere. Possibly power for hydrogen seperation? The old lefty idea of Nuc plants being ticking time bombs has been thoroughly debunked. The waste product? Seems like we have an issue there, but there have been good people working on that for decades. Without the paranoid delusions of “environmentalist” thought, we might be surprised at what they come up with. Hell, there’s lots of space in space…
Yep, we’ll have energy discrepancies with alternative fuels (maybe/probably), but Detroit, Tokyo, Bonn, etc. will deal with that.
Companies spring up every day with ways to deal with seemingly insurmountable problems that others think are..well, insurmountable. Remember when Dick Tracy watches were thought to be insurmountable, only available in a comic book? The idea that it is too hard just chaps my.., you know.
India and China? What, everyone thinks they wouldn’t like to get rid of the “Oil needle” early in their capititalistic development? Sell them the technology. (They’ll probably steal it anyway, but..)
We need to get off our dead a**es, take a small(?) hit now to end this war – finally and surely. People will scream, kick and probably sue (Mexico). Let them eat technology.
Remember — petroleum is fungible. So reducing consumption in the USA won’t, by itself, reduce the amoung of money that flows to the Islamofascists; only reducing world consumption will do that. And I doubt China is about to cooperate.
Not only that, but only about 1/4 of USA energy usage comes from transportation, and only a fraction of *that* is from automobiles (I don’t have the number handy). So even a big reduction in automotive usage will have only a small effect on USA oil consumption, which in turn will have only a tiny effect on world consumption.
Moreover, the 55-mile speed limit doesn’t work–at least not where I’ve been looking. There’s a stretch of highway around here where the speed limit goes from 65 to 55, and drivers’ behavior doesn’t change — they still drive between 65 and 70 regardless of the posted limit.
In my experience, far too many people believe that changing laws will automatically change people’s behavior. In practice, people resist changing their behavior unless they have a reason to do so that makes sense to them. Absent such a reason, changing laws merely encourages disrepect for all law.
“Not only that, but only about 1/4 of USA energy usage comes from transportation, and only a fraction of *that* is from automobiles (I don’t have the number handy).”
Andrew, with due respect, can I ask where you got that from? It seems to contradict what I’ve read here. That link says that 2/3rds of all US oil use goes to transportation, and of that 2/3rds, 2/3rds of that is directly refined into gasoline (as opposed to diesel, jet fuel, fuel oil for large things like oceangoing ships). It’s all said under “U.S. Consumption by Sector”.
Again, this is said in all due respect; I’m not trying to troll you. If you have other sources, I’m happy to look at them.
Reducing the speed limit won’t stop uber-rich Socialist and Hollywood celebrities from jetting across the globe in their own personl airplanes or driving five blocks in an SUV to get to a speech/sound stage or making hoards of junk movies used to indoctrinate the unwashed masses with idiocy.
Clinton is just another Collectivist who knows how to live the good life while creating equalized poverty for everyone else.
I’ll offer a trade. I’ll accept 55 mile per hour speed limit if Hollywood would stop wasting so much energy creating worthless junk.
My car seems to get its peak gas mileage at about 70mph. 55 would mean using *more* gas, if I bothered to obey the law, which I wouldn’t.
The main beneficiaries of a 55mph speed limit will be insurance companies, because tickets given for exceeding 55 will allow them to raise rates on drivers who don’t pose a greater risk of claims.
Clayton Cramer has a good post about the harms of low speed limits.
Steve Ehrbar is wrong when he says limits the zone of impracticality for 55 to the Sierra Nevada. Obviously, he’s either never driven on I-5, or has forgotten that it’s west of the Sierra Nevada. But “95th meridian to the Diablo Range” doesn’t sound as good. But even that’s too limiting. I-280 in San Mateo County should have a limit of about 85, because it’s a nice wide road, with good visibility, and some damn big hills that are hard to climb if one starts at 55mph at the bottom. And part of I-280 is *west* of downtown San Francisco.