Bush Says We Need To Get Off Mideast Oil, Doesn't Mean It...Quite a noble and lofty goal. Too bad it's just window dressing..."Breakthroughs on this and other new technologies will help us reach another great goal: to replace more than 75 percent of our oil imports from the Middle East by 2025."
--President Bush, in his State of the Union speech two nights ago.
One day after President Bush vowed to reduce America's dependence on Middle East oil by cutting imports from there 75 percent by 2025, his energy secretary and national economic adviser said Wednesday that the president didn't mean it literally.
He pledged to "move beyond a petroleum-based economy and make our dependence on Middle Eastern oil a thing of the past."That's comforting...
Not exactly, though, it turns out.
"This was purely an example," Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said.
UPDATE: If you think Bush is serious about reducing America's oil obsession via innovation, you might want to think again...
From today's NY Times:
Bush's dedication to American energy independence officially has a shelf-life of less than 48 hours...The Energy Department will begin laying off researchers at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in the next week or two because of cuts to its budget.
A veteran researcher said the staff had been told that the cuts would be concentrated among researchers in wind and biomass, which includes ethanol. Those are two of the technologies that Mr. Bush cited on Tuesday night as holding the promise to replace part of the nation's oil imports.
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