Environmentalists aren't the only ones applauding the sales stumble of big SUVs and pickups in the face of high gas prices.The only way alternative fuel vehicles are EVER going to work is if the free market wants them. I've always said that the environmentalists have been going about this thing the wrong way...instead of aggravating their opponents, they should be working with them to find common ground. At least one group, a truly bi-partisan effort from what I can tell, gets it.
Groups of conservative Republicans see an opportunity to step up a campaign to promote alternative-fuel vehicles and wean the nation from dependence on foreign oil. While skeptical about links between autos and global warming, the conservatives have concluded that cutting gasoline consumption is a matter of national security.
A who's who of right-leaning military hawks -- including former CIA director R. James Woolsey and Iraq war advocate Frank J. Gaffney Jr. -- has joined with environmental advocates such as the Natural Resources Defense Council to lobby Congress to spend $12 billion to cut oil use in half by 2025. The alliance highlights how popular sentiment is turning against the no-worries gas-guzzling culture of the past decade and how alternative technologies such as gas-electric hybrids are finding increasingly widespread support.
"I think there are a number of things converging," said Gary L. Bauer, a former Republican presidential candidate and former head of the Family Research Council who has signed on to a strange-bedfellows coalition of conservatives and environmentalists called Set America Free. "I just think reasonable people are more inclined right now to start thinking about ways our country's future isn't dependent on . . . oil from a region where there are a lot of very bad actors."
Thursday, March 31, 2005
Conservatives, Environmentalists, and Oil
From the Washington Post (registration required):
