FOTPC’s hit Mitt again!
August 2nd, 2007 by Carbon CoalitionThis is the third time in a week that we have blogged about Republican candidate Mitt Romney. With his many swings through NH, FOTPC’s are out in full force to make sure he is talking about his plans to combat global warming.
Noting Romney’s passion to pursue energy independence, one FOTPC asked Romney if he would consider mandates for fuel efficiency standards. Romney responded “Would I consider them? Yeah. I just assume the CAFE requirements have not worked terribly well over the last 20 years as you know in part because they haven’t applied to trucks and so America has moved more and more to trucks and SUV’s and so the average fuel economy over the last I think 20 years has been almost flat.”
Romney continued to say that with rising gas prices, we will “slowly but surely move to vehicles that are far more fuel efficient and you’ll see our manufacturers start competing on the basis of fuel efficiency.” In our July 27th blog we wrote “One can only wonder if he would support raising fuel efficiency standards or if he hopes the market alone will bring us up to 50mpg.”
It seems Romney is still not making this distinction clear. He did note that he thinks “one of the best ways to do that is by having a joint public/private partnership to invest in new technologies related to fuel efficiency as well as new sources of energy.” Romney did not detail any more about his plans for this partnership.
Another FOTPC asked Romney about the Kyoto agreement. Romney stated that “I would not take America into the Kyoto agreement unilaterally. Meaning, I want to make sure that the other developing nations are part of any effort to reduce greenhouse emissions.”
Romney emphasized that he would like to see standards applied on a global basis and then returned to what we can do unilaterally to both become energy independent and reduce carbon emissions with fuel efficiency and alternative energies. He ended by noting that he would then like to see that technology go to China and that “those things will go a long way to helping reduce the CO2 emissions.”
