NRDC Vehicles Expert Testifies Before Congress on U.S. Transportation Policy

WASHINGTON (June 25, 2008) - Deron Lovaas, vehicles campaign director at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) is testifying today before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee to offer an analysis of the federal government’s role in determining transportation policy. With high gas prices at the pump affecting families across the country, Lovaas will also offer policy prescriptions for lessening our addiction to oil and creating a more economically and environmentally sustainable transportation sector.

 

 

“The best way to attack our overdependence is to drive down the oil intensity of our economy generally and our transportation sector specifically. The potential to reduce demand for oil is greater in surface transportation, by demand-side reductions achieved via higher vehicle efficiency and reduced car traffic (shifting to alternatives such as rail transit) as well as substitutes such as biofuels and electricity (i.e., plug-in hybrid electric vehicles). In fact, NRDC projects that if we addressed this challenge aggressively we could virtually eliminate gasoline use by 2050…”

 

“Our transportation infrastructure investments over the next decades will either support or thwart efforts to address the intertwined challenges of historic demographic changes, dangerous oil addiction, and global warming.”

 

The full testimony is available at: http://docs.nrdc.org/air/air_08062501A.pdf