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Search Terms: sulfur, gasoline, regulations

Document 183 of 228.

May 10, 1999, Monday

SECTION: EDITORIAL/OPINION; Pg. 4A

LENGTH: 588 words

HEADLINE: Closing a loophole

BODY:
he Clinton administration's move to toughen federal standards for automobile tailpipe emissions would close a huge loophole and help balance the effort to reduce air pollution.

The proposed rules would require an 80 percent reduction, phased in over several years starting in 2004, in the amount of smog-producing chemicals emitted from auto tailpipes. It would also require refiners to drastically lower the sulfur content in gasoline on a nationwide basis. The proposal is expected to become final at the end of the year. And for the first time, the standards will apply equally to a category that includes what has become the biggest-selling kind of passenger car on the road, the sport utility vehicle.

SUVs, overgrown luxury versions of yesteryear's Army jeep, represent an unresolved conflict in the national psyche. Today's Americans tend to think of themselves as pro-conservation. Environmentalism in the general sense is seen as a non-partisan, unquestioned national value right up there with patriotism and motherhood.

And yet Americans in ever-growing numbers are rushing to their auto showrooms and buying SUVs - which outweigh, out-consume and out-pollute the ordinary automobile by significant margins. An average auto weighs about 3, 000 pounds; an SUV weighs 4,000 to 5,500. An average auto gets 20 or more miles to a gallon of gasoline in city driving; many SUV models get about 12. SUVs can emit more than twice as much pollution as average autos. And despite it all, SUVs accounted for nearly half of all new vehicles sold last year and continue to rack up sales records.

SUVs belong to a category called light trucks, and that's where the loophole has come in. Light trucks have been subject to far looser federal emission standards since the first such rules were written more than two decades ago. That may have made sense in the 1970s, when the category mainly comprised pickup trucks used on the job by farmers and construction crews. But it's a different story today. The advertisements for SUVs may stress their capabilities in the wilderness, but the average owner uses them to drive to work or take the kids to school.

In short, SUVs are passenger vehicles. And, as the administration rightly recognizes, there's no reason for them - or the minivans and pickups in the light-truck category - to be treated any differently under anti-pollution regulations. If Americans want to drive them, they shouldn't balk at paying more to ensure the kind of environmental standards they endorse.

The administration's new rules also break ground on another front. They address not just automobile hardware, but automobile fuel as well, requiring refiners to reduce the sulfur content of gasoline nationwide to 30 parts per million from a current average of about 330 parts per million. That doesn't sit well with the oil industry, which says it would add 6 cents a gallon to the price of gasoline - at least triple what the administration estimates. But it only makes sense to deal with both of the basic components in the internal-combustion process. Why apply strict standards to the furnace and not to the fuel it burns?

Here again, the question of cost comes down to a matter of practicing what you preach. Since the early 1970s, Americans have embraced the environment. They have required industry and government to clean up their acts - and, to be sure, the nation is a far better place for it. But continuing the progress will require individual Americans to share the effort, too.

LOAD-DATE: May 10, 1999

Document 183 of 228.


Search Terms: sulfur, gasoline, regulations
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