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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tejek who wrote (325884)	2/14/2007 2:00:19 PM
From: RetiredNow	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1574876

Hybrids lose their luster Wed Feb 14, 6:56 AM ET Toyota's high mileage, gasoline-electric Prius sedan was once so popular that the carmaker had only a three-hour supply. Buyers had to get on waiting lists, and frustrated would-be owners bid the price of used Priuses above the new price or paid thousands above sticker for new ones. Now Toyota has a nearly 30-day supply, and it's about to roll out its first national advertising campaign for the car, which Environmental Protection Agency estimates gets as much as 60 miles per gallon. For the first time since Prius arrived in 2000, Toyota is also offering incentives. What's changed? Not the nation's ruinous dependence on imported oil. Not the fact that petrodollars underwrite terrorism and fill the coffers of Iran, Russia, Venezuela and other states that use them to undermine U.S. interests. And not the fact that the United States uses a quarter of the world's energy, propping up the hugely profitable oil market. Partly, it's that Toyota is building more Priuses, and other carmakers have offered their own fuel-efficient hybrids. But mostly it's the price of gasoline. After spiking to more than $3 last year, a gallon of regular is back to a bit more than $2, calming the national anxiety about energy. Sales of big vehicles have recovered - General Motors' pickup and SUV sales rose by almost 33% one month last fall - and the huge demand for high-mileage cars has slackened. What had been an interesting national conversation about weaning ourselves from oil has been muted. Until the next time prices spike. This is great news for producers, who try to extract as much money as they can without causing oil addicts to kick the habit. But it's a crazy way to make national policy. When prices soar, the nation goes to battle stations, buys smaller cars, seeks ways to cut energy use, hunts for scapegoats and pressures politicians to do something. An extra dollar at the pump spurs more inventiveness and conservation than any federal mandate. But when prices drop, the urgency melts away, as if everything will be fine. This is the way children think. Adults should know better. The logical thing is to keep prices consistently high. The most straightforward way to do that - a gasoline tax that would rise when world prices fall - would push the nation away from oil and help fill the gaping federal budget gap. But it also would be a drag on the economy and particularly burden the working poor who have long commutes. Politically, it's a non-starter. OK, but if not that, what? America's leaders, and presidential aspirants, have an obligation to offer a credible alternative. The nation's off-and-on urgency about its energy problem is unsustainable. It's fine to think that technology will eventually fix the problem, but with only intermittent urgency to drive a technological fix, "eventually" could be a long way off. Meanwhile, Iran, Russia and Venezuela grow richer while the USA grows more vulnerable. If that doesn't change, the nation will pay - in far more costly ways than it does at the pump.