By Gerard Degroot
06-06-04
It's Friday morning in Houston, and Betsy Koons is doing the school run. In the back of her Hummer, her two kids are watching a Scooby Doo video. Her car, a Sport Utility Vehicle (or SUV), gets about eight miles to the gallon.
Speaking of petrol (or gas), she realises that her tank is nearly empty. She
pulls into a Gulf station, but then remembers that she's boycotting them in
protest at fuel prices. She instead goes to the Shell station across the street,
where the price is the same. She'll boycott Shell next week as well.
Koons and millions of other angry Americans are blaming oil companies for the fact that petrol prices have edged above $ 2 per gallon. Websites such as boycottgasoline.com have sprung up, urging consumers to buy strategically. Since they can't abstain from gas completely, they boycott individual oil companies on a rolling basis.
What's wrong with this picture? Never has anger been quite so misplaced. Pay
attention, Mrs Koons. Stop the car and pulldown your sun visor. The person you
see in that little mirror is the real culprit in the current crisis.
In 2002, Americans consumed 25.4 % of global oil production. They currently lead the world in per capita car ownership, with nearly 800 vehicles per 1,000 people. In 1987, when the term SUV didn't exist, light trucks made up 28.1 % of new vehicle sales. If that seems incredibly high, try swallowing this: today more than half of the vehicles sold are SUVs.
The SUV obsession defies explanation. Granted, Americans have always liked big
cars, but never this big. It's a mystery why a four-wheel-drive truck with a
4.5-litre engine is needed to take the kids to school. While ads persistently
show these vehicles splashing through a stream or climbing a rocky hill, 90 % of
owners never take their off-road vehicles off the road.
Some Americans justify their SUVs on safety grounds, citing the fact that
compact cars get crushed in high-speed accidents. But the reason small cars get
crushed is because they get hit by SUVs. It's all a bit like the gun obsession:
Americans feel they need SUVs to protect themselves from other Americans in SUVs.
The consequences of this obsession are striking. The US is currently third on
the world table of oil-producing countries, behind only Russia and Saudi Arabia.
Twenty years ago, they imported 28 % of the oil they consumed. But then the SUV
mania took hold. Today, 63 % of American consumption comes from foreign sources.
Big cars are possible because gas is so cheap. Despite all the complaints about gouging oil companies, America currently ranks 102nd on the world table of gasoline prices. (Britain, by the way, lies second.) While Americans seem to accept that prices of all other commodities inevitably rise, they find it difficult to accept that gas should do so. Taking account of inflation, the current price of just over $ 2 is about the same as $ 1 in 1990, which is roughly what gas cost back then.
While it might seem hard to believe, America does have an energy policy. Under
the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards now in place, passenger cars
are supposed to average 27.5 miles per gallon. But SUVs are exempt from the
ruling because they're not classified as passenger cars. The four-wheeled
behemoths are also treated lightly in taxation laws.
Americans are reluctant to wake up and smell the gasoline. Despite the rise in fuel prices, sales of SUVs have not suffered. The American Automobile Association has found that gas prices have almost no effect on consumption, especially since incomes rise at a faster rate. The only thing that will affect behaviour is an actual oil shortage, as occurred during the Arab oil boycott of 1973 -- a crisis which inspired a brief enthusiasm for economy cars. But a shortage today seems unlikely, especially now that OPEC has decided to increase production.
Instead of accepting responsibility for the current crisis, Americans look to
government, industry or science to find a magical solution which will allow them
to keep their battlewagons. A ridiculous amount of hope has been directed toward
fuel cell technology, a panacea which scientists admit is a long way off. Many
Americans also want Congress to allow drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife
Refuge, an environmentally insane proposal which President Bush supports.
Experts estimate that if CAFE standards were applied to SUVs, the US would save more than 900,000 bpd of gasoline. If American consumption was closer to the British standard, the US would easily be self-sufficient in fuel.
Two years ago, Senators John Kerry and John McCain proposed a bill to increase
CAFE standards by 50 %. But, after an outcry by car-makers, oil industry
lobbyists and SUV owners' clubs, the Senate rejected the bill by 62-38. Since
becoming a presidential candidate, Kerry has softened his stance, as he doesn't
want to annoy SUV-driving voters. Drive on an American highway and you
occasionally see bumper stickers on compact cars which read: "Support
terrorism. Drive a SUV."
A lot of America's problems are indeed linked to oil. Iraq, 9/11, Enron and global warming all reek of gasoline. Robert Kennedy Jr, of the National Resources Defence Council, has argued that an improvement in fuel efficiency of just 2.7 miles per gallon, applied to every vehicle on American roads, would eliminate American dependence on oil from the Persian Gulf.
It makes you think. Unfortunately, thinking is not something Americans do much
of while driving their SUVs.
Source: scotsman.com