The
United Automobile
Workers and the Sierra
Club teamed up the other
day in an Op-Ed piece
for The Times blasting
an administration
proposal that would
further weaken the
already inadequate
standards governing fuel
economy for the nation's
cars and light trucks.
This odd alliance
suggests that America's
ravenous appetite for
gasoline could become an
important issue this
election year, with the
situation in the Middle
East serving as a daily
reminder of our
servitude to foreign
oil.
There
are other straws in the
wind. John Dingell, a
smart and influential
Michigan congressman,
recently warned the car
manufacturers whose
interests he has long
defended that they
should start making
significant improvements
in fuel economy before
Washington forces
changes upon them.
Shortly thereafter came
the coincidental yet
revealing news that Ford
and G.M. were hustling
to get fuel-efficient
S.U.V.'s into the
showrooms to compete
with the Japanese.
All
this does not amount to
a revolution; good
intentions and a few
fuel-efficient S.U.V.'s
will not make a real
dent in oil consumption
or in the greenhouse
gases that flow from
automobile tailpipes.
The tax incentives for
buyers of
gasoline-and-battery-powered
hybrid cars contained in
the pending energy bill
are minuscule. And while
the administration
recently ordered up a
small increase in fuel
economy for light trucks
— including S.U.V.'s
and minivans — it has
done nothing to close
old loopholes, including
a largely meaningless
credit for
ethanol-powered
vehicles, that will
effectively cancel the
gains from the new
efficiency standards.
The
issue clearly needs
someone to give it a
shove.
John Kerry, the
Democratic front-runner,
ought to have an
incentive to do that. In
addition to his broad
environmental
credentials, he has
(with Ernest Hollings
and John McCain)
proposed legislation
that would raise
fleetwide fuel economy
to 35 miles per gallon
— a significant jump
that could save millions
of barrels of oil every
day. Yet bold ideas have
a way of disappearing in
the heat of a campaign.
Environmentalists recall
that in 1992 Bill
Clinton, prodded by Al
Gore, promised to raise
fuel economy to 45 miles
per gallon and then
backed away when
President Bush's father
accused him of
jeopardizing millions of
American jobs.
The
present occupant of the
White House, who tends
to frame every
environmental issue in
terms of jobs, is almost
certain to raise the
same fears. And he'll
have an audience. The
auto workers have not
yet signed on to major
increases in fuel
economy standards. They
just don't want Mr. Bush
to go backward.
Anyone
who adopts this issue
will therefore have to
be creative as well as
brave. There is no
shortage of good ideas
about how to get from
here to there — bigger
tax credits for
consumers who buy
fuel-efficient cars, for
example, as well as
significant production
tax credits for
manufacturers to help
them convert from the
comfortably profitable
S.U.V. world to a
riskier universe of
fuel-efficient hybrids.
The trick will be
getting these ideas onto
the election-year
agenda.