Support the troops: use less oil

Last month, the Energy Future Coalition wrote to the President urging him to pursue an energy policy that would curtail the use of fossil fuels.

As the Wall Street Journal reported last month:

Today, 26 former national-security officials from Republican and Democratic administrations will send a letter to President Bush calling for "a major new initiative to curtail U.S. consumption" by improving the fuel economy of U.S. autos and developing alternatives to fossil fuels. The group asks the federal government to spend as much as $1 billion on the effort over the next five years—"a level proportionate with other priorities for our nation's defense."

Now the New York Times notes that President Bush has, predictably, ignored this advice, and is still pushing an energy plan -- developed with the help of the energy industry behind closed doors -- that would continue to subsidize the use of fossil fuels:

The House is moving quickly and with sad predictability toward approval of yet another energy bill heavily weighted in favor of the oil, gas and coal industries. In due course the Senate may give the country something better. But unless Mr. Bush rapidly elevates the discussion, any bill that emerges from Congress is almost certain to fall short of the creative strategies needed to confront the two great energy-related issues of the age: the country's increasing dependency on imported oil, and global warming, which is caused chiefly by the very fuels the bill so generously subsidizes.

Where are the Democrats on this? In California, they are trying to get rid of the gas tax!