Reducing Fuel Consumption as a Common Vision

Environmentalists and groups of conservative Republicans are stepping up a campaign to promote alternative-fuel vehicles and wean the USA from dependence on foreign oil. While conservatives are still skeptical about links between autos and global warming, they have concluded that cutting gasoline consumption is a matter of national security.

Right-leaning military hawks—including former CIA Director R. James Woolsey—have joined with other conservative Republicans and environmental advocates such as the Natural Resources Defence Council to lobby Congress to spend $12 billion to cut oil use in half by 2025. Their vision is to end America’s dependence on foreign oil, build a sustainable energy system, and, in the process, create millions of jobs. The alliance highlights how popular sentiment is turning against the no-worries gas-guzzling culture and how alternative technologies such as gas–electric hybrids are finding increasingly widespread support in the United States.

“I think there are a number of things converging,” said Gary L. Bauer, a former Republican presidential candidate and former head of the Family Research Council who has signed on to a strange-bedfellow coalition of conservatives and environmentalists called Set America Free. “I just think reasonable people are more inclined right now to start thinking about ways our country’s future isn’t dependent on … oil from a region where there are a lot of very bad actors.”