Nature Loves Our Cars, Really
In April of 2007, Acronym Required wrote satirically about US auto owners in denial in "Cars: Buying Cognitive Dissonance" . While headlines blared warnings on climate change and the reality of driving was smog filled lanes of traffic jams, automobile ads featured cars climbing to the tops of unpolluted mountains, amidst pristine forests and zooming past glaciers. We commented on the delusional love affair drivers have with cars, and the spectacle of all those slick, shiny, plastic-y, carbon emitting SUVs posed ironically in not yet ruined landscapes:
"...I remind myself that it's not only the Queen of England, with her privilege and idle time, her Landrover and a vast territory of heaths and heathers, who can see a fourteen-point buck in the countryside (--as in the movie The Queen--). Nothing stops me from doing the same, from being the Queen of England for a day. All I have to do is purchase a new Subaru from my local dealer and any day I can crash through beautiful forests in four wheel drive comfort. Then, according to one Subaru ad, a deer will emerge magically from the forest, stand next to my windshield and gaze at me appreciatively, the two of us, bonded by nature and my new car."Today, more so than last decade or the decade before that, we have fires in California, hot and erratic weather predictions, floods in the midwest, suffocating summer heat, and brutal winters. As they did twenty years ago, scientists make hand-wringing pleas to a mostly impassive Congress. Regardless of reality, Americans gluttonous devotion to Automobile, would lead the to continue throttling their SUV's with calvalier glee. Except now gas is $5.00 per gallon ( its $4.75, but it will be there as soon as I publish this) and consumers are trading their SUVs in for Priuses. Times change.
Leaders "Furious with Detroit"
While consumers respond to the change, why did recognition of the impending climate change and an effort to curb carbon emissions take so long? Last Sunday, the New York Times offered up quotes from senators who say we should have acted earlier in America, Asleep at the Spigot". Pete V. Domenici (R-NM) the ranking Republican member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, who had in recent years rather unsuccessfully encouraged Congress to increase CAFE standards said: "It was a bipartisan failure to act." Once upon a time, there was such an effort. Former Sierra Club lobbyist Dan Becker recalled 1990, watching "Mr. Levin and Mr. Helms, diametrically opposed on most issues, walk amiably together onto the Senate floor to cast their votes, on a CAFE standards bill in 1990. 'This wasn't East-West, right-left, or North-South,' he says. 'But had we passed that bill, we'd be using three million barrels less oil a day now.'"
For every member of Congress who tried to pass legislation on emissions in the 1990's, or who like Domenici started in 2005 to put effort into gathering support for CAFE standards, many others have not yet come to their senses. Besides Domenici, Congress expressed little remorse about missed opportunities to avert the current energy situation, but is righteously indignant, "furious with Detroit for fighting so hard".
Scapegoating is exactly what I would hope for from the leaders I elect. When the repercussions of their failures to act on behalf of their constituents come to light, the least they can do is cast around quickly for someone else to blame. But it's not Detroit's fault for aggressively seeking profit, that's their job, it's their obligation to their shareholders. It's is the legislature's job to balance the competing ambitions of their constituents, corporations and individuals.
Blaming Detroit, Blaming Consumers
If blaming corporations gets too close for comfort, as a senator or congressman of course you can always blame the consumer. After the credit crisis, pundits and financial leaders blamed consumers for the country's economic woes. They scolded consumers for spending too much on their credit cards and called for better consumer training, but said nothing about the Fed's out of control spending, nothing about regulation cuts, nothing about Bush's plea to keep shopping right after 9/11. Similarly, Representative John D. Dingell, who has long defended the auto industry for his state and who now burnishes his environmental credentials by taking on bisphenol-A, blames the American consumer: "He likes it sitting in his driveway, he likes it big, he likes it safe", he told NYT. Which, coincidentally, is also what the lobbyists insist.
This is one great thing about representative government. Representatives can ultimately blame the people or, more accurately, people's wanton wims. But given the number of Priuses and Minis that now inhabit our streets, you would never believe "he likes it big". Ford sold 55% fewer SUV's last month, and 40% fewer pick-ups then in the previous year.
As last year and the year before, available at our fingertips, along with the woulda-coulda-shoulda crowd, is the full range of serious and interesting discussions from dedicated representatives. Bill Moyers talked to Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) last week about her efforts on the cap and trade initiative.
Boxer took over as Chair of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee at mid-term election, and led the charge on the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) had previously chaired the committee, and on his watch he never had any intention of leading the country away from oil consumption. Inhofe famously said: "Could it be that man-made global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people? I believe it is." He brought his preposterous attitudes to the committee, and even tried under Boxer's watch to prevent Al Gore from testifying. Boxer basically wrested control of the gavel from him, saying: "you're not making the rules". As she explained to Moyers "times have changed...the environment is back front and center"
Boxer's efforts were not enough this time, because Republicans mounted a filibuster and defeated the Climate Initiative Act. Again, a bipartisan failure to act. Yet Boxer viewed the effort optimistically, despite the bill's ultimate defeat. She called it a milestone towards charging for carbon emissions and weaning off foreign oil. "Change is coming. We're going to fix this problem because we have to", she said.
