No Reason for Cartwheels Over Plan to Boost SUV Mileage

For reasons only the best geneticists could explain, I was born in California with no interest in the automobile as a social statement.

I was happy enough to get the keys to my dad’s Rambler Classic every now and then back in high school, even though the lowriders ridiculed me. And I have become no hipper in middle age.

This became eminently clear in May, when I went to Santa Monica Nissan to lease a lowly, practical Sentra. As customers stampeded past me to marvel at the glistening wonder of the Xterra and Pathfinder, I suspected I might soon be the last man in Southern California without a sport utility vehicle.

“The Xterra is our No. 1 car,” says Michael Harris, the salesman who handled my deal. It’s particularly popular among the 20-to-35 set, he said.

Well, of course it is. I suppose the SUV handles particularly well on the rugged terrain of Melrose Avenue.

For the sake of conversation, I asked Harris how many of these future leaders inquire about gas mileage.

“None of them,” he said. “They don’t ask about anything. It’s a cutesy thing. It’s a hot little car.”

Call me evil, but it is because of these people that when gas hit $2 a gallon, I was beginning to feel giddy. I was rooting for it to flirt with $3 by midsummer.

Light trucks, a category that includes SUVs, now constitute 47% of all vehicle sales in the United States. Because of it, average gas mileage for all cars is at its lowest since 1980.

Last year, carbon dioxide emissions--a prime contributor to global warming--jumped 3% in the U.S. while declining in other industrialized nations. And, as a side note, The Times reported last week from an Alaskan village that’s being lost to the sea because of melting ice.

Honk twice if you love this country.

Look, the SUV is here to stay. Particularly in Southern California, where there’s no beating them when a blizzard hits. So the sensible thing, it seems, would be to require better mileage. And what word better describes the august U.S. Congress than “sensible?”

Last week, while climatologists in Amsterdam discussed fears that tiny amounts of global warming could produce dramatic climate changes, House GOP leaders got tough on the auto industry. In a directive that would be added to the energy bill, gas-aholic SUVs will have to be more fuel efficient in the future, saving 5 billion gallons of gas by the end of the decade.

Five billion gallons.

It sounded terrific.

It looked terrific.

Some environmentalists fell over backward and had to be revived, shocked that there’d be any progress at all. But that was before they made the mistake of doing the math.

Kate Abend, of the Public Interest Research Group, says it adds up to a whopping 1 mile per gallon more.

One mpg.

We might have seen a more ambitious proposal, but congressional leaders were exhausted that same day by a courageous and victorious battle to make sure campaign finance reform doesn’t gum up the political process.

“One mile is insignificant,” says Abend, a global warming specialist. “And it’s frustrating because research says there’s widespread support for stronger measures.”

U.S. Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Los Angeles) wasn’t doing cartwheels either.

“I think Detroit certainly has to be pleased with this provision because it doesn’t even make them do what they’ve said they’re capable of doing” mileage-wise, Waxman said. “It may even allow them more latitude not to meet maximum fuel-efficiency standards.”

As it is, SUVs average almost 7 mpg less than regular passenger cars. But the directive doesn’t even require a specific mpg improvement from the auto industry, which argues that more fuel-efficient SUVs will cost more money, and consumers won’t buy them.

Clearly, they haven’t been to Santa Monica Nissan, where nobody asks any questions besides, “Where do I sign?”

On Wednesday, Waxman will support an expected proposal by Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) that would eliminate the loophole that puts SUVs in the “light trucks” category. It would also require that all vehicles get 40 mpg within 15 years.

This would reduce fuel costs, cut emissions and help eliminate dependence on foreign oil. A lovely trifecta that would be, but Waxman has not rented a party hall and called the caterers.

“It will be a hard fight because the leadership of the committee has already signed off on [the 5-billion gallon] proposal,” he says.

Kate Abend gets right to the heart of it: “We’re up against a powerful lobbying industry, and Vice President Dick Cheney went to Detroit recently and told them they better lobby harder.”

Don’t let it worry you. Summer’s here and gas is down to a buck-sixty, so pack up the kids and go somewhere exotic, like Alaska.

Before it’s a lake.

*

Steve Lopez can be reached at steve.lopez@latimes.com