Printed February 22, 2004


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.


http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/22/opinion/22SUN2.html?ex=1078460657&ei=1&en=a64142a99a9a4787