Jeff Jacoby writes in today’s Boston Globe:

LATE LAST month, President Obama announced new automobile fuel-efficiency standards that will require cars to achieve an average of 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025. Vehicle fleets currently average 27 miles per gallon, so the new target would boost fuel efficiency by an unprecedented 100 percent within 14 years. But barring an engineering miracle, that’s probably pie in the sky. After all, from 1975, when the first federal mileage rules for new cars were enacted, it took more than 30 years to improve automobile efficiency by just 60 percent. And the easy gains were achieved early on; since 1980, fuel economy has climbed by only about 1 percent a year.
In truth, there is less to the new standards (known as CAFE, for corporate average fuel economy) than meets the eye.
A mandate of 54.5 mpg may generate arresting headlines, but down in the fine print, the numbers aren’t nearly as striking. “Even if the auto industry manages to meet the new standards,’’ reports The New York Times, “it is unlikely car buyers will see many fuel-economy stickers with such high mileage.’’
But the fuzzy mileage numbers aren’t nearly as misleading as the endlessly repeated claim that greater fuel efficiency will mean lower fuel consumption, and in turn reduce American dependence on foreign oil.
“This agreement on fuel standards,’’ declared Obama, “represents the single most important step we’ve ever taken as a nation to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. Think about that.’’
It is getting hard to remember a time when US presidents didn’t tout “energy independence’’ – meaning freedom from imported oil – as an urgent and achievable American objective.
“Let this be our national goal,’’ said Richard Nixon in his 1974 State of the Union address: “At the end of this decade, in the year 1980, the United States will not be dependent on any other country for the energy we need.’’
A year later, Gerald Ford foresaw a reduction in oil imports “by 1 million barrels a day by the end of this year’’ and complete energy independence by 1985.
In 1979, Jimmy Carter blasted America’s “intolerable dependence on foreign oil’’ and swore: “Beginning this moment, this nation will never use more foreign oil than we did in 1977 – never.’’
Year in, year out, the quest for energy independence is one presidents never tire of invoking. What Nixon, Ford, and Carter were pushing in the 1970s, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama have continued to push in the 2000s. And while the 2012 presidential candidates are sure to clash on many things, the desirability of reducing oil imports from abroad is not likely to be one of them.

The rest here.