Transportation For America » NRDC Executive Director calls for bold action on oil dependence, citing T4 America blueprint

NRDC Executive Director calls for bold action on oil dependence, citing T4 America blueprint

June 21, 2010
By Sean Barry

President Obama stressed America’s reliance on oil during his Oval Office address last week, noting that we consume 20 percent of the world’s reserves while supplying only 2 percent. The transportation sector accounts for 70 percent of the nation’s oil consumption.

The need for a blueprint to address these imbalances could not be clearer, says Natural Resources Defense Council Executive Director Peter Lehner, in a guest post for the Infrastructurist.

We need a new direction that moves America beyond oil and other dirty fuels. This is admittedly a huge challenge: The U.S. consumes the equivalent of the 19,000 or so barrels of sludge released daily by the BP geyser in less than two minutes. Yet this eye-popping consumption level also affords opportunities to address our energy needs by focusing on saving oil rather than scouring the ends of the earth for more.

Lehner praises the Obama administration for adopting higher fuel economy standards for cars and trucks, a step that will make our nation’s vehicle fleet cleaner and more efficient. Lehner also calls for a climate bill that makes alternatives sources of energy more affordable and available.

But all roads inevitably lead to transportation policy, and Congress can make a real dent in America’s oil consumption by embracing a forward-looking reauthorization of current surface transportation law. The draft proposal unveiled by Congressman Jim Oberstar’s House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee includes significant moves toward increased transit options and stronger benchmarks, but could go further.

This is where the Transportation for America campaign comes in, and Lehner points to our coalition’s Route to Reform blueprint as an important guidepost. Adopting the policies in T4 America’s Route to Reform could reduce oil consumption by more than a million barrels a day by 2030, and Lehner seeks the kind of urgency that would make that goal possible.

To sum up, we must use every tool at our disposal given the massive scale of the challenge. This means focusing on reforming our outdated, wasteful transportation law. I look forward to working with Congress and the President on this goal, for the sake of the Gulf, the planet, and future generations.

Filed under: Campaign Blog
Tags: featured, nrdc, obama, oberstar, oil dependency

Doug Cumming

We’re with you. But so many Americans seem oblivious to the connection between the BP disaster and their own consumption. To make people understand this, and a lot of other connections between our energy use and the true costs, we need for Obama to use all his vaunted powers of public speaking to help people see. Those connections are, admitted, complicated and unseen. A tax on fossil fuel use would help people see AND feel the connections. The current energy bill seems too much a makeshift compromise, but it’s a start.

Keep up the good work.