The State of our Union is.... getting greener??

President Bush focused significantly more on energy issues in last night's State of the Union address than in prior years, and we can only hope that the initiatives won't end up in the pile of empty promises that seems to accumulate each year. The President called for measures to wean the country off of foreign oil sources through the use of alternative fuel (mainly ethanol), proposing that we reach 35 billion gallons of alternative fuel per year by 2017, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 18% within the year 2012. Along this vein, President Bush also expressed the need to "reform and modernize fuel economy standards for cars," projecting to conserve 8.5 billion more gallons of gas by 2017. Additionally, the President proposed a plan to double the size of the country's Strategic Petroleum Reserve in order to maintain a normal energy level until fuel production changes are carried out.

The environmental focus pleased many progressives, yet many continue to question the feasibility of the plan. Ethanol is in some ways the solution we've been waiting for, but to reach the 35 billion gallon mark would require more corn than the country's entire yield last year, which was 11.1 billion bushels. Hopefully we can supplant that portion with some big advances in cellulosic ethanol (made from woodchips and grass), although the cellulosic technology must undergo significant progress in order to turn a profit, and will require several million more acres of farmland.

President Bush made a somewhat vague reference to the whole global warming issue, avoiding the problems posed by electric power plants, which make up a hefty 40% of greenhouse emissions. Furthermore, liquified coal is likely one of the alternative fuels on Bush's list, which would totally defeat the emission-reduction plan-- liquified coal creates twice the harmful gasses as it's gasoline counterpart. On the whole, the country may be on the way to curbing our oil addiction and gaining indepedence from foreign sources, but it will probably take a few more speeches before we stabilize the State of the Ozone.