quote:

---

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Bush administration is abandoning an eight-year, $1.5 billion program to produce highly fuel efficient cars in favor of a government-industry push to develop vehicles powered by hydrogen fuel cells.

The Energy Department said Secretary Spencer Abraham planned to announce details of the new program, dubbed ``Freedom Car,'' at a major auto show in Detroit on Wednesday.

The Energy Department and senior White House policy officials in the Bush administration have all along been cool toward the Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles, a program championed by the Clinton administration as the answer to improved automobile fuel economy.

Begun in 1993, the joint venture between the federal government and the Big Three domestic automakers was seen as a way to put family-size sedans that get 80 miles per gallon into showrooms by 2004.

Using advanced aerodynamics, new engine technologies and lighter composite materials, the companies have produced prototype vehicles getting 70 mpg, but have not come near developing a fleet of such vehicles for mass production.

Instead, the administration intends to focus on speeding up development of hydrogen fuel-cell powered vehicles, a technology that has attracted intense interest in recent years, although probably a decade away from producing large numbers of cars.

The new government-industry partnership ``will further the president's national energy policy, which calls for increased research in hydrogen technology to diversify and enhance America's energy security,'' says the Energy Department.

Abraham and executives of General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co., and DaimlerChrysler AG, were to unveil the new joint venture at the 2002 North American International Auto Show in Detroit.

The same companies were at the heart of the Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles, a program that then-Vice President Al Gore hailed as the breakthrough that would quadruple fuel economy in motor vehicle fleets.

But the Bush administration a year ago signaled it was planning to go another direction. It proposed slashing funding for the Clinton-era program that received nearly $1.5 billion in federal subsidies over eight years.

The new federal push for development of fuel cells, first reported this week by two Detroit newspapers, the Free Press and the News, is expected to spur industry efforts into developing motor vehicle engine and power systems that eventually will replace the internal combustion engine.

Although several automakers, including DaimlerChrysler, Ford and General Motors, have said they expect to have fuel-cell vehicles in showrooms within the next four or five years, wide availability of such cars is probably a decade or more away.

Abraham, who as a senator from Michigan supported the PNGV program, is expected to emphasize in his Detroit remarks that development of a hydrogen-based infrastructure will help reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil and reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

A fuel cell produces energy from a chemical reaction when hydrogen is combined with oxygen. It is environmentally sound since the only byproduct is water, instead of toxic fumes and carbon dioxide, the major pollutant contributing to global warming.

In recent years, the cost of fuel cells has dropped sharply. Hydrogen can be produced from natural gas aboard vehicles or pure hydrogen can be used, requiring development of a new supply infrastructure.

---

So.. Bush IS shelving the fuel-efficiency car program...

But in favor of one to eliminate the associated problems of oil dependence AND CO2 emissions altogether!

Another better plan.
 

---

Posted by The_Tom (Member # 38) on :
 
Good for Bushy.
 

---

Posted by Tahna Los (Member # 33) on :
 
Fine by me.
 

---

Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
 
I can see one problem w/ this... They were working on one project. Then, after eight years, they decide "screw it, let's do this other, better thing". Whose to say that, in another eight years, they won't scrap the hydrogen fuel-cell project for something else? And, eight years after that, something else again? Decades from now, we'll still be driving the same cars, because they never finished any of the projects.

Now, I'm not saying this is necessarily true. The article doens't really give enough information. Maybe they have good reason to believe that the old project is going nowhere, and the new one will be finished long before the old one could have been. But it still seems a little questionable...
 

---

Posted by First of Two (Member # 16) on :
 
That's pretty much the way the government has always worked, from the days of Washington.

Each new administration scraps some policies of the preceeding one in favor of its own.

This policy just happens to be better, IMHO.
 

---

Posted by Grokca (Member # 722) on :
 
I've been following the fuel-cell technology thing for a while now, great stuff coming from Ballard tech. I would think this is the better way to go than just trying to make gasoline power go farther. Especially when we could have more and better uses for the oil than just burning it in our cars.
 

---

Posted by Malnurtured Snay (Member # 411) on :
 
Now, would Bush have done this if he wasn't trying to garner Democratic votes for the next election? Surely, he isn't stupid enough to think that there isn't a lot of resentment about his being in office (or that he'll be able to take advantage of 9/11 any better then his Dad and Desert Storm).

So ... would he have done this if he'd won the election with a mandate?

And, who is going to run as VP with him in '04?
 

---

Posted by CaptainMike (Member # 709) on :
 
I thought he solidified his approval rating by having the IRS mail a bribe to most of the voters. I got my $300 in September.
 

---

Posted by Malnurtured Snay (Member # 411) on :
 
If that was his intent, he should've mailed them so they arrived a couple of months before the next election
 

---

Posted by CaptainMike (Member # 709) on :
 
there's still time for that ...

besides, i really hope that my fellow Americans wont really be fooled by a $300 bribe.. i sure wasnt.. but i do have a nifty new set of lightsabers and boots to wear the the concerts next year
 

---

Posted by First of Two (Member # 16) on :
 
Hey. Pay my rent for two months, and I might vote for YOU, too.

Who are the Democrats planning to run next time?
 

---

Posted by Tahna Los (Member # 33) on :
 
It seems like Gore is still on the ticket.
 

---

Posted by First of Two (Member # 16) on :
 
*laughs hysterically*

Imitates Jack Nicholson from "A Few Good Men"

"Please tell me you're not basing all your hopes on a block of wood with the charisma of an anteater. Please tell me you've found someone with an ounce of personality."
 

---

Posted by Tahna Los (Member # 33) on :
 
Actually, before Bush took office, I had that same opinion on him.
 

---

Posted by Shik (Member # 343) on :
 
Alan Keyes. Commence laughter.
 

---

Posted by Malnurtured Snay (Member # 411) on :
 
Actually, I think it would be as stupid for Gore to run as for Bush to keep Cheney on his ticket.

John Edwards.

quote:

---

Hey. Pay my rent for two months, and I might vote for YOU, too

---

quote:

---

CONSHOHOCKEN, Pa. (AP) -- President Bush signed legislation Friday to clean up thousands of polluted industrial sites, a measure he lauded as evidence of what happens ``when people decide to cooperate, not bicker'' in Congress.

Bush traveled to Conshohocken to sign the bill, a five-year plan to provide up to $250 million a year to states, local governments and Indian tribes to clean up the sites, known as brownfields.

``We are returning common sense to our cleanup program,'' Bush said. ``We will protect innocent small-business owners and employees from unfair lawsuits and focus our efforts instead on actually cleaning up contaminated sites.

``Environmental protection and economic growth can go on together,'' he said.

The president cited the brownfields bill as an example of bipartisanship, in which elected officials say, ``I'm proud of my political party. But I'm more proud of my country. And I want ... to do what's right for America first, not my political party.''

Bush signed the bill at the Millennium Corporate Center, which stands on 30 acres that once was a contaminated site. Before redevelopment, the land -- which sits on the banks of the Schuylkill River and once held a steel plant -- was closed off by chain-link fences and littered with abandoned tires and industrial trash.

Friday's trip was the seventh time Bush has visited Pennsylvania since taking office a year ago. It was his second journey this week away from Washington for a bill signing; Tuesday, the president went to Ohio to sign education legislation into law.

Outside of the bill being signed, the Bush administration plans to double spending next year on brownfields cleanup. Christie Whiteman, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, said Thursday that Bush, in his 2003 budget proposal, will seek $102 million more than the $98 million Congress appropriated this year.

``This is something Congress was trying to get for 10 years,'' Whitman told The Associated Press. ``The president made a commitment and we're trying to get it done.''

After raising the spending level to $200 million, Whitman said, the administration may propose spending $250 million in fiscal 2004.

So far the government has handed out $2 million of the $98 million available this year, said Linda Garczynski, director of the EPA brownfields program. Ten recipients, ranging from nonprofit groups to local governments such as the District of Columbia, are getting $200,000 each for a brownfields job training pilot program.

The EPA has received more than 100 applications from states and other entities seeking money to assess the extent of pollution on individual brownfield sites. Thirty-two of those will be awarded money.

The agency also has gotten more than 40 applications for money to help secure loans for cleanups, and 20 to 25 of those requests will be granted, Garczynski said.

The money is handed out based on how many sites are involved, the severity of problems and the impact the project might have on a community, among other factors, she said.

---

quote:

---

John Edwards? That fake psychic I-talk-to-the-dead guy?

---

quote:

---

How about this new bipartisan environmental cleanup bill?

---