U.S. PIRG's Legislative Director Anna Aurilio

The President of the United States says America is addicted to oil.

It’s tempting to point out that the first step toward solving a problem is admitting that you have one.

When President Bush acknowledged America’s oil addiction in his state of the Union address in January, we identified the logical next step by pointing out that the goal of reducing Middle East oil imports would be “absolutely doable if the President picked up a pen and required the auto industry to use existing technology to increase gas mileage.”

In fact, requiring cars to get 40 miles per gallon would save 5.4 million barrels of oil a day—nearly eight times as much as the potential peak oil from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and more than eight times the amount of oil the U.S. imported from Iraq each day in 2004. Making our cars go twice as far on a gallon of gas would also save U.S. consumers nearly $80 billion a year at the gas pumps.

And putting America’s technological know-how to work to increase gas mileage would also create an estimated 41,000 new jobs in the auto industry by 2015. If that’s not enough, since America’s enormous fleet of passenger vehicles accounts for one-fifth of all U.S. carbon dioxide emissions, raising fuel economy standards is the single biggest step our country can take to curb global warming. We’ll keep working to persuade Congress to do its part by supporting proposals like Senator Durbin’s (Ill.) to increase miles per gallon standards to 40 mpg by 2020.

The President can take a simple step toward breaking America’s oil habit and gain a lot of ground—saving consumers money, creating jobs and curbing global warming pollution. All he has to do is pick up a pen.

Anna Aurilio
Legislative Director