It was interesting hearing Bush mention research in hydrogen vehicles in the State of the Union address. While it would be great fun to do that sort of research and the work should be done, it needs to be stressed that there are serious hurdles and the end state is not a necessarily a panacea.
I worry that Bush and his friends often table items by having them studied. (this is clearly the case with global warming) The motive may be to give the (voting) public warm fuzzies on important issues while ensuring that nothing happens.
So while I go along with hydrogen research, I also want to see something in the short term ... Little things like increased fleet economy standards, encouragement of hybrid vehicles, improvments in diesel emissions, improvements in two cycle and small four cycle emissions ... all of these are very easy, well understood technologies.
Calling a spade a spade it makes sense, in this time of the Bush induced deficit (why is it that the Republicans are the ones who have run up the huge deficits in the past 30 years?), to fund Desert Storm 1.1 with a gas tax. Estimates on the cost of the war run between $60 billion and $150 billion. A reasonable start would be to add a $1 a gallon gas tax on the 133 billion gallons of gas consumed in the US yearly. It could run for a year and be renewed if necessary for a second or third year.
I would hazard a guess that a few years of the tax would increase the new fleet economy average by at least five miles per gallon.
8:56:30 AM 
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