Posted on: Thursday, March 14, 2002

EDITORIAL
Senators miss chance to limit gas-guzzlers

"Yep, son, we have met the enemy," Pogo told us in 1971 about the degradation of our environment, "and he is us." We thought what cartoonist Walt Kelly was telling us was ironic, funny, maybe even ultimately true.

But nowadays most of us think it's somebody else's job to do something about the environment. If you doubt that, take a look at that SUV in your driveway.

That's why there was scarcely a peep of protest in January when the Bush administration announced it was abandoning a Clinton administration research initiative to create an affordable family sedan by 2004 that could get up to 80 miles per gallon of gasoline.

Why? One stated reason was that despite $1.5 billion in government subsidies over eight years, it appeared the deadline wouldn't be met. Why waste more money on the effort?

But the problem wasn't so much science as it was a lack of enthusiasm in Detroit. And who can blame the automakers for balking at supplying their customers with something other than what they obviously want?

The Senate this week has been discussing new fuel-economy standards to replace those Bush had abandoned in January. More modestly, they sought to bring the cars on America's roads up to an average 36 mpg by 2015.

That initiative failed, too, by a 62-38 vote.

To be sure, it is America's refusal to limit its gas-guzzling, and not considerations of national security, that has driven the Bush administration to seek the opening to exploitation of the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge. And we'd bet that the reason the Pentagon is establishing bases in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan has a lot more to do with regional oil pipelines than with the fight on terrorism.

In January, Bush threw one bone to those who care about the environment, saying the effort being spent to develop high-mileage cars would be shifted to the development of cars powered by hydrogen fuel cells.

Clearly the wave of the future, this nonpolluting technology can draw on virtually unlimited and cheap fuel (hydrogen). But it's years away.

Even though environmentalists are enthusiastic about the prospect of hydrogen fuel cells, some say Bush's initiative was designed to distract Congress from enacting stricter fuel-economy laws — if so, it worked yesterday.

We applaud the push for fuel cell technology. But we also need to encourage near-term solutions like gas-electric hybrid cars. Viable subcompact cars of this type are on the market; what we need really soon is a version that larger numbers of Americans will be willing to trade in their SUVs for.