Reply #2: Here's something very compelling: [View All]

[Lex]

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"If we raise Corporate Average Fuel Economy by one mile per gallon, we get more oil than there is in two Arctic National Wildlife Refuges. If we raise efficiency by 2.7 miles per gallon, we eliminate 100 percent of Gulf imports into this country.

President Carter passed CAFE standards in response to the second oil crisis in 1979. Within six years, we had raised average fuel economy by seven-and-a-half miles per gallon. That efficiency caused an oil glut in this country, collapsing the price of gasoline to the lowest levels in decades.

Oil companies went to the Reagan administration and persuaded them to roll back CAFE standards. The Gingrich Congress subsequently made it illegal for the government to pass them. If Reagan hadn't done that we would not have imported one drop of Gulf oil into this country after 1986."


http://www.commonwealthclub.org/archive/02/02-02kennedy-qa.html