Yes, Conservation is a Good Thing

David Roberts at Grist goes after Democrats for being too cowardly to state publicly that they have the correct policy for dealing with high gas prices.  He points to the following chart and notes that part of what changed in 2007 was the passage of new conservation and efficiency standards.  He also points out that the savings between the original projections and the actual trend is larger than America's proven oil reserves.

In an update to the article, he points out that the spike in oil prices, the financial crisis and the recession were also largely responsible for the drop in oil consumption.  Those are major factors that could potentially be more responsible than the referenced legislation.

Nevertheless, it is impossible to ignore that conservation and efficiency are almost always the cheapest and most cost effective to deal with any energy issue.  Unfortunately, Democrats are often too afraid to tell the public that such policies work.