Copyright 2000 The Chronicle Publishing Co.
The San
Francisco Chronicle
OCTOBER 15, 2000, SUNDAY, SUNDAY EDITION
SECTION: SUNDAY CHRONICLE; Pg. 2/Z1; WASHINGTON
INSIGHT
LENGTH: 692 words
HEADLINE: U.S. Love Affair With the SUV;
How
Congress served as matchmaker
BYLINE: Carolyn Lochhead
BODY:
EVERYBODY SEEMS to love to hate sport utility
vehicles just about as much as everybody seems to want to have one.
Much
as SUVs are now reviled in the media and at dinner table conversations as a
menace to civilization, roughly half of all new cars sold in the United States
are SUVs or pickup trucks.
So now Americans are outraged that gasoline
approaches $2 a gallon, although apparently not enough to trade
in the Yukon or check out a bus schedule.
SUVs, of course, in addition
to being ideally constructed to run over pedestrians and babies, aim blinding
lights into rear view mirrors, obliterate smaller cars in their path and suck up
tons of gas.
Politicians, ever on cue, are responding with all manner of
schemes to remedy the discomfort of filling up SUV tanks. Vice President Al
Gore, the Democratic presidential nominee, was behind the move to tap the
Strategic Petroleum Reserve to reduce prices, however temporarily. Gore also has
been demagoguing "Big Oil," accusing oil companies of beating up on the little
guy with cruel and obscene profitmaking.
Texas Gov. George W. Bush has
proposed drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, even though that would
hardly make a dent in addressing U.S. oil consumption.
But at least
Republicans are being consistent. Democrats, including the most supposedly
die-hard environmentalists from Gore on down, are doing everything but
suggesting that higher gas prices are a useful and even vital market signal to
help reduce demand. They stubbornly refuse to even acknowledge that high prices
might actually encourage us to do things like quit driving tanks to the corner
7-11.
Indeed, it was rock-bottom oil prices that hit
$10 a barrel at one point -- an aberration due in part to the
1997 Asian financial crisis and recession -- that helped fuel American energy
consumption, including the SUV's surge in popularity.
Moreover, as it
turns out, Washington is in large part directly responsible for mass spread of
the SUV.
A report by the environmental group Friends of the Earth points
out that a huge tax loophole in effect subsidizes SUVs.
In 1978, in
response to the first oil shock, Congress imposed an extra tax on large "gas
guzzler" cars to encourage fuel efficiency. However, Congress exempted "light
trucks" such as pickups and SUVS in order to protect farmers and construction
tradespeople who use the vehicles in their work.
This is in addition to
a similar SUV and pickup truck exemption from Corporate Average Fuel
Economy or CAFE standards imposed in 1975, again with
the same rationale of aiding farmers and small businesses.
Lo and
behold, sales of the big American passenger sedans that had to pay the tax and
meet the CAFE standards fell, and sales of SUVs and pickups doubled.
From these little tax and regulatory loopholes grew a social
transformation now visible on any highway. That's why SUVs like Ford's huge
Excursion get about 12 miles to the gallon, its Expedition gets somewhere around
17 and the Explorer around 21. That's why automaker profits are biggest on SUVs,
which is why automakers have aggressively marketed them as family cars.
Some gamely hope that fashion will intervene. They point to small signs
of an SUV backlash among educated social elites, who have taken their own SUV
fever to such a gluttonous pitch -- flooding parking lots with sleekly hulking
Mercedes Benz and Lexus versions -- that the luxury SUV has begun to lose its
punch as a status symbol.
Apparently, the fashionable thing now is a
more restrained Euro-luxury station wagon that struts its owner's anti-SUV
sophistication.
But powerful as fashion is, it is unlikely to trump tax
and regulatory incentives. For now, it appears that our politicians who most
love to trumpet their concern for the environment prefer to demonize "big oil"
rather than allow market prices to quell demand.
And in the one area --
federal tax and regulatory policy -- where they really could take effective
action, they haven't a word to say.
Carolyn Lochhead reports
from The Chronicle's Washington bureau. You can reach her at
clochhead@sfchronicle.com.
LOAD-DATE: October 16, 2000
