Month: August 2005

IT CAN BE DONE

A reader reminds me of Gregg Easterbrook’s pro-Kerry piece last year pointing out how incentives to move away from SUVs and toward hybrids could have a cumulatively important effect on our oil consumption. Money quote (TNR, for reasons beyond me, keeps most of its content behind a subscriber wall):

A simple one-third increase in the mileage of new vehicles would have a remarkably beneficial impact on the United States-Persian Gulf relationship, and quickly.
Here’s the math. About 17 million new cars and “light trucks” (SUVs, pickups, and minivans) are sold in the United States each year and driven, on average, about 12,000 miles annually. If the fuel efficiency of 17 million vehicles driven 12,000 miles annually rose by one-third, from a real-world 17 MPG to a real-world 23 MPG, that would save about 200 gallons of gasoline annually per vehicle, or about 3.4 billion gallons of gasoline. Since a barrel of petroleum yields 20 gallons of gasoline, about 170 million barrels of oil would be saved.
Perhaps you think, Aha! With U.S. petroleum demand at 20 million barrels daily, this MPG initiative has saved just about one week’s worth of oil. Yes–in the first year, the MPG increase would have little effect, in much the same way that, in their first year, few investments yield much return. But remember the miracle of compounding! In the second year, with two model-years’ worth of vehicles at the higher MPG, 340 million barrels of oil are saved. The next year, the savings is 510 million barrels, the next year 680 million, and so on. In just the fifth year of this initiative, we would need to purchase about 850 million fewer barrels of petroleum–approximately the amount the United States imports each year from the Persian Gulf states.

Of course, John McCain backs this strategy. 9/11 was the obvious opportunity to revolutionize American energy policy to rid ourselves of having to deal with Islamo-fascist cartels. Bush blew it.

SUVS AGAIN

Thanks for the mounds of email. Some points: yes, there are many other reasons for our over-consumption of oil. But transportation is the main one and the massive rise in the use of SUVs has made a difference. Here’s a chart of oil usage from 1950 – 2002. Transportation is the biggest drain and is becoming more so. Levitt and Dubner also cast doubt on the efficacy of those cumbersome child seats in the back of cars that make SUVs the size of a 1950s ranch house. Here’s their debunking. In general, I favor the market figuring these things out. With any luck, as gas heads toward $3 a gallon, hybrids will see more growth in sales. But shaming SUV-owners is still a good option. SUV-owners and sellers are indirectly weakening the war on terror, by financing the enemy far more than anyone needs to. If young men and women can sacrifice their lives for our security, can others not buy a different kind of car? Or is that too much to ask?

EMAIL OF THE DAY

“Well, since I am as big a Soccer Mom as anyone, I think I need to chime in here. Yes, my mother didn’t have an SUV when she was taking care of us in the 1970s. She used to pack four or five of us kids in the back of her Ford Maverick. You know what? The car seat laws are much stricter now. And the car seats are much bigger. And the kids are required by law to sit in them until they are much older. There is no way you could fit even one of today’s car seats in my mother’s old Ford Maverick. I wouldn’t want to try. Kids are much safer in today’s cars, with today’s car seats, than they were when I was a kid. You say yesterday’s kids thrived? I’ll let you check on the car accident statistics, the survival rates, etc., and then you can get back to me on that.
In the meantime, I will continue to schlep my kids and my kids’ friends around in my Honda Oddysey minivan, with the three huge car seats inside.”

Let me know about the child car fatalities if anyone out there can. But why can’t we relax the car seat laws and size down the car seats? Jeez. Meanwhile, we’re financing Islamist terrorism and hurting the environment for the sake of … the kids. Groan. The nanny-state and the gas-guzzling state: about as good a description of Bush conservatism as any, I suppose.

P.S. Do I sound like I had a great vacation?

SUVS AND TERRORISM

Fareed Zakaria makes an excellent point today in a column about rising oil prices, and how they are helping to finance the terror masters in Tehran, Saudi Arabi and elsewhere. Some kind of move toward greater energy efficiency is essential in the war on terror. But what I didn’t realize is how the curse of the SUV is so damaging. Fareed writes that 54 percent of today’s U.S. fleet of cars are made up by these ugly, behemoth tanks that guzzle gas, and make life miserable for everyone not in them. My anti-SUV ire always goes up in the summer, when I see these vast, bloated symbols of excess bulldozing down the narrow streets of Provincetown, pushing every bicyclist, pedestrian or small child out of their way. My only solace is thinking of how many of these SUV owners are pouring money away to keep their mobile homes on the road. Pity that same money goes to finance Islamist terror. And please don’t give me all this guff about how I don’t have a car (hey, I’m not indirectly donating to al Qaeda), having to take kids here, there and everywhere, with all their stuff and the dogs and suburbs and soccer practices and on and on. All of this took place before SUVs; kids were just packed into back seats and trunks were stuffed full if necessary. Parents coped. Kids thrived. If all else failed, people could even have less stuff. Imagine that: less stuff. As readers know, I’d gladly put a dollar of extra tax on gas, insist on higher fuel standards for cars, make SUVs comply with the fuel standards of other cars and put a tax on SUVs on top pf all that. We are in a war. As far as I’m concerned, those people driving SUVs are aiding and abetting the enemy, and helping to finance the terrorists that want to kill us all. I’m well aware that the notion that the Bush administration has any interest in energy independence or taxing gas or deterring SUVs is about as likely as their demanding subsidies for sex-changes, but I might as well vent. We can always stigmatize these SUV-terror-enablers. How about bumper-stickers for non-SUVs that simply say: my car doesn’t subsidize Saudi terror. Would that help?

THE GREAT DEBATE

Slate weighs in – long after this blog sliced through the debate – on the question of male genital mutilation, also known as circumcision. We now know it can help prevent the transmission of HIV. But at what cost? Slate’s inviting readers who have had sex with foreskin and without foreskin to figure out the differences. Stay tuned … 1.2 million American baby boys are mutilated a year.