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Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty Pushes For Hybrids September 2004Here are some excerpts from recent editorials that appeared in Minnesota newspapers.Boosting Ethanol There was a lot of positive talk in farm country about Gov. Tim Pawlenty's new plans to bolster the ethanol industry. The governor deserves a good deal of credit for standing so strongly behind one of Minnesota's growing industries. In short, Pawlenty wants to drastically increase the use of ethanol in coming years - good news for corn producers, ethanol-making plants and Americas efforts to use less foreign oil. Some of the changes Pawlenty urges can happen fairly quickly: *He wants to let single-occupancy hybrid-fuel cars use the car pool lanes on metro freeways. *He wants to add at least 20 hybrid buses to the Metro Transit fleet by 2008. *And he wants to have state vehicles cut their use of gasoline by 50 percent by 2015. The state would buy more hybrid vehicles, and jack up their use of E-85 ethanol fuel. One of the other changes will take longer to implement, and require changes in other areas of the auto industry, but it is worth pursuing, too: Pawlenty wants to double the state's requirement for ethanol content in gasoline to 20 percent, a change that will only happen once at least half the new vehicles sold in Minnesota have warranties for using ethanol. There are two reasons to applaud all this: One is that it is great to see Pawlenty's desire to make Minnesota a leader in the alternative fuel industry. It will be a boost for our area in terms of economic development. Secondly, it helps bolster Pawlenty's claim to be strong on the environment. Ethanol is clean-burning, much less of a pollutant than petroleum. The only people who reacted negatively to the governor's plan were, predictably, representatives of the auto and trucking industries, and free-market advocates. But so what? We need to take these steps, for the good of the economy and environment. Detractors are just going to have to suck it up. This is the direction the state's heading, with the governor leading the way. | ||
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