Why Oil Sheiks Love A Good Hummer
By Arianna Huffington
http://www.ariannaonline.com

Once again, America is a nation divided.

I'm not talking about the irreparable, brother-against-brother
split between those who think the Bachelor should have proposed
to Brooke instead of Helene. I'm talking about a contentious
clash that is just beginning to rage. Call it the SUV war. As you
read this, the opposing camps are staking out their turf.

On one side sales of the gas-guzzling, pollution-spewing,
downright dangerous behemoths continue to soar. And apparently,
the more fuel-inefficient the better: Dealers are having a hard
time keeping up with the demand for the Hummer H2, GM's new
$50,000 barely domesticated spin-off of the Gulf War darling,
which struggles to cover 10 miles for every gallon of gas it
burns. The symbolism of these impractical machines' military
roots is too delicious to ignore. We go to war to protect our
supply of cheap oil in vehicles that would be prohibitively
expensive to operate without it.

There seems to be no shortage of Americans who think that
consuming 25 percent of the world's oil just isn't enough. Maybe
the next model, the H3, will need to be connected to an
intravenous gas-pump hose all the time. And there would still be
people eager to buy it.

These are the same folks who don't give a whit (this being a
family newspaper) that at an OPEC meeting last month, the oily
group's secretary general announced that one of the few bright
spots in an otherwise gloomy world was the U.S.'s seemingly
unslakable thirst for its product. How nice it must feel for SUV
owners, knowing that their swaggering imprudence is helping the
world's anti-democratic oil sheiks sleep just a little better at
night. Call this camp the Bigger Is Better crowd. Their motto:
"Burn, baby, burn...30 percent more carbon monoxide and
hydrocarbons and 75 percent more nitrogen oxides than passenger
cars." How about this for a bumper sticker: "Honk if you hate the
Ozone layer!"

Lining up on the other side of the SUV DMZ are a disparate
collection of groups and individuals whose aim is to win the
hearts and minds -- and change the driving habits -- of the
American public.

These include the Evangelical Environmental Network, which is
promoting greater fuel-efficiency through a provocative TV ad
campaign that asks: "What would Jesus drive?" Hint: I don't think
the answer is a Hummer. (Turning water into oil wasn't really his
thing.) This comes at the same time that Americans for Fuel
Efficient Cars, a group I co-founded with film producer Lawrence
Bender, environmental activist Laurie David, and movie and TV
agent Ari Emanuel, is producing ads parodying the
drugs-equal-terror ads the administration is running. In this
case, we're linking driving SUVs to our national security. When
Hollywood progressives and the "WWJD?" crowd independently hit on
the same idea, you know that something is up.

Even as SUVs continue to roll off the assembly line and out of
car dealers' showrooms at a record pace, there is a growing sense
that the tide of public opinion is turning against these metal
monstrosities. A tipping point in the push to wean ourselves from
foreign oil has finally been reached. The SUV makers have won a
few battles, but they may be about to lose the war.

The new mood is very similar to the consciousness-raising that
followed the efforts of Mothers Against Drunk Driving and the
Designated Driver campaign. Before that, the prevailing attitude
was "hey, what's the big deal?" The campaign hammered home a very
compelling answer to that question, and the public's perception
of drinking and driving was changed forever. Getting loaded and
getting behind the wheel went from being cool to being
anti-social. With luck, getting behind the wheel of a loaded
gas-guzzler is about to undergo the same transformation.

To see how the SUV fight is going, take a look at the media,
usually an excellent weather vane when it comes to these kinds of
societal shifts. In the last week alone there has been an
explosion in the amount of positive coverage given to the
anti-SUV movement, including segments on all the networks'
nightly news shows. This is no small thing when you consider the
mega-millions in advertising dollars the auto industry
represents.

And in Washington, after steadfastly opposing any raise in fuel
efficiency standards, the Bush administration let it be known
last week that it is considering a proposal to increase the
standard for light trucks and SUVs by 1.5 miles per gallon by
2007.

While Team Bush hailed the proposed boost as a major victory in
the battle for energy independence, Sen. John Kerry, who along
with Sen. John McCain last spring proposed raising the SUV
standard by 50 percent, called the 7 percent increase "window
dressing." Others labeled it "political theater" and "almost an
insult in its modesty." A thousand dittos.

It does seem woefully inadequate -- especially when you consider
how many loopholes have already been driven through by light
trucks and SUVs, which are currently allowed to average 7 miles
per gallon less than regular cars. And the ultimate absurdity is
that if an SUV is massive enough, it is entirely exempt from
federal fuel economy standards. That's right, build one with a
gross vehicle weight of over 8,500 pounds -- like the Ford
Excursion or the new Hummer -- and the leviathan's lousy gas
mileage doesn't even have to be reported to the government.

Chew on that one and see if it doesn't rev your engine:
automakers are rewarded for being particularly inefficient.
There's the Bush Free Market for you.

Even the muckety-mucks in Detroit are starting to get the
message. Ford, for instance, whose executives met last week with
representatives from the "What Would Jesus Drive?" campaign, has
pledged to boost the overall fuel efficiency of its SUVs by 25
percent over the next three years, and plans to introduce a
hybrid gas-electric model that will get around 40 mpg.

Of course, much of the industry's "we care" message is little
more than a desperate attempt to forestall the inevitable and put
a pretty PR bow on a very ugly reality. Their real message is:
"We care about making money, and if doing that now means we have
to make it seem like we care about the environment, then so be
it." Take, for example, this "faux" socially-conscious reminder
offered in the new Hummer brochure: "With the power to cross any
terrain comes the responsibility to protect that terrain and its
potentially fragile ecosystems."

The war's not going the SUV makers' way, and they know it. So now
they want to make it look like we're all on the same side. At the
moment, they're trying to figure out just how far they have to go
to quell the uprising. It's in all of our interests to let them
know that a 1.5 mpg improvement is not enough. The consequences
of our addiction to foreign oil are no longer an abstraction.
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