2. Immediately eliminate grandfather clauses which exempt old U.S. refineries (built prior to the 1970s) from EPA Clean-Air standards (which, btw, have been almost entirely gutted in successive Republican administrations since the 1980s). This is the single biggest hurdle to expansion of U.S. refinery capacity because it makes construction of new refineries economically unfeasible in comparison to keeping the old ones (barely) functional. Beginning to exercise the fine schedules of the Clean Air Standards against all refineries would create a refinery construction boom the likes we've never seen. Competitive pressures to creating gasoline, diesel, heating oil, etc with the highest possible cleanliness and efficiency would finally begin to improve the domestic supply-side of the equation. You could see improvement in U.S. carbon products outputs of 10-15% over 5-10 years and the bringing online of advanced refining technologies that could handle extra-heavy crudes, orimulsion crudes and the like from vast South American proven reserves as a more secure alternative to Middle East products, (almost all of which are completely off the market right now due to lack of refining capabilties). You also add something like 50-100 years of reserves to current estimates of world reserves. 3. Abolish current EPA stances on vehicle pollution regulation by individual states, under which the EPA legally challenges the existence of state standards. In a true exercise of it's intended purpose, the ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION Agency would instead support and encourage states to adopt strict standards to help it in it's mandate to enforce effective pollution controls on all industries across the country. Had such a policy not been recently pursued against California, it would have meant that 5% of each car manufacturer's sales in 2010 would have been of low-emissions vehicles, a sales cap adopted almost 10 years ago in CA, overturned by the Supreme Court in the past year with the EPA as the plaintiff. A lot of good that sort of short-sighted 'coddling' has done for Detroit. 4. Offer Federal Tax advantages to corporations based on the percentage of their U.S.-based employees who telecommute. This one is a no-brainer long-term for everybody, supporting rural communities viability, offering cost and infrastructure reductions to companies, affecting gasoline demand, metropolitan rush hour traffic and promoting cleaner, lower cost, shorter-distance local lifestyles for remote employees, not to mention huge employee satisfaction. Estimates on this vary, but over 10 years a significant federal tax incentive can contribute to the creation of 10-30 million new U.S.-based telecommuting jobs and approximately a 2.5-5% reduction in gasoline demands. 5. Expand and make permanent soon-to-lapse federal Energy-Efficiency Credits for consumers and businesses for renewable solar, wind and other power generation investments. Even add a 1% tax break for the value of each Kilowatt Hour that private net energy producers sell back to the grids. 6. Limit ethanol and other bio-fuels incentives to that produced from low cost, non-food raw materials such as switchgrass. Not a popular stance in the corn belt, but we need to limit the consumption of energy-intensive crops to actual direct and indirect food production for humans (and livestock). Their is no moral right in subsidizing commodity prices for U.S. farmers and adding more inflationary pressures hurting American consumers while much of the world's population grows hungry from the cost of food. Also reduces the demand for oil-derived fertilizers and fuel for farm equipment. (This one would require congressional support). Hoping this gets back to Chicago and some of the folks helping Barack to think about what he'll need to do for America AFTER we win in November!
Cheers,
JP
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