Republican presidential nominee John McCain, looking for ways to tackle the country's energy problems, is proposing a US$300 million government prize to whoever can develop an automobile battery that far surpasses current technology.
“In the quest for alternatives to oil, our government has thrown around enough money subsidizing special interests and excusing failure,” said McCain in remarks as prepared for delivery in a speech he was to give yesterday at Fresno State University in California.
“From now on, we will encourage heroic efforts in engineering, and we will reward the greatest success,” he said.
With gasoline prices rising ever higher, the US economy in trouble and global warming becoming a more real fear, developing new sources of energy and moving away from the US’s dependence on foreign oil are shaping up to be major themes of the presidential campaign.
Both candidates have sparred in recent days over how to best tackle the country’s energy problems.
Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama promised on Sunday to end unregulated oil trading, claiming the so-called “Enron loophole” was partly to blame for the spike in US fuel costs, particularly record gasoline prices.
Energy trading giant Enron collapsed in a major corporate scandal in 2001 that sent executives to prison, but not before it won exemption a year earlier from federal oversight for energy commodity trading.
Critics claim that measure has allowed speculators to drive up the price of oil well beyond levels dictated by current supply and demand.
The Illinois senator has also called on for a penalty on windfall profits for oil sales at or above US$80 a barrel.
While McCain supports closing the loophole, he has rejected the windfall profits penalty Obama’s proposing, saying the same measure caused the failure of Jimmy Carter’s presidency by limiting oil exploration in the face of the Arab oil embargo four decades ago.
Earlier in the week, McCain called for an end to a ban on offshore oil drilling that has been in place for more than a quarter century.
The Arizona senator has said removing the ban would be a key part of his energy plan.
Obama dismissed the idea of lifting the ban, saying it wouldn’t result in any short-term results for cash-strapped Americans.
McCain’s so-called Clean Car Challenge to award US$300 million to create a new type of automobile battery technology would equate to US$1 for every man, woman and child in the country, “a small price to pay for helping to break the back of our oil dependency.”
McCain is also proposing stiffer fines for automakers who skirt existing fuel-efficiency standards, as well as incentives to increase use of domestic and foreign alcohol-based fuels such as ethanol.
In addition, McCain’s proposal would provide US automakers with a US$5,000 tax credit for every zero-carbon emissions car they develop and sell.
Without blaming his fellow Republicans in the Bush administration directly, McCain said: “It feels the same today, because the unwise policies of our government have left America’s energy future in the control of others.”
Eleven people, including a former minister, were arrested in Serbia on Friday over a train station disaster in which 16 people died. The concrete canopy of the newly renovated station in the northern city of Novi Sad collapsed on Nov. 1, 2024 in a disaster widely blamed on corruption and poor oversight. It sparked a wave of student-led protests and led to the resignation of then-Serbian prime minister Milos Vucevic and the fall of his government. The public prosecutor’s office in Novi Sad opened an investigation into the accident and deaths. In February, the public prosecutor’s office for organized crime opened another probe into
RISING RACISM: A Japanese group called on China to assure safety in the country, while the Chinese embassy in Tokyo urged action against a ‘surge in xenophobia’ A Japanese woman living in China was attacked and injured by a man in a subway station in Suzhou, China, Japanese media said, hours after two Chinese men were seriously injured in violence in Tokyo. The attacks on Thursday raised concern about xenophobic sentiment in China and Japan that have been blamed for assaults in both countries. It was the third attack involving Japanese living in China since last year. In the two previous cases in China, Chinese authorities have insisted they were isolated incidents. Japanese broadcaster NHK did not identify the woman injured in Suzhou by name, but, citing the Japanese
RESTRUCTURE: Myanmar’s military has ended emergency rule and announced plans for elections in December, but critics said the move aims to entrench junta control Myanmar’s military government announced on Thursday that it was ending the state of emergency declared after it seized power in 2021 and would restructure administrative bodies to prepare for the new election at the end of the year. However, the polls planned for an unspecified date in December face serious obstacles, including a civil war raging over most of the country and pledges by opponents of the military rule to derail the election because they believe it can be neither free nor fair. Under the restructuring, Myanmar’s junta chief Min Aung Hlaing is giving up two posts, but would stay at the
YELLOW SHIRTS: Many protesters were associated with pro-royalist groups that had previously supported the ouster of Paetongtarn’s father, Thaksin, in 2006 Protesters rallied on Saturday in the Thai capital to demand the resignation of court-suspended Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra and in support of the armed forces following a violent border dispute with Cambodia that killed more than three dozen people and displaced more than 260,000. Gathered at Bangkok’s Victory Monument despite soaring temperatures, many sang patriotic songs and listened to speeches denouncing Paetongtarn and her father, former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, and voiced their backing of the country’s army, which has always retained substantial power in the Southeast Asian country. Police said there were about 2,000 protesters by mid-afternoon, although
RSS