Senate’s Stall on Fuel Bill Is Another Chip Off Antarctica’s Block

How ironic. As Washington lawmakers were complaining late last month that soccer moms would be deprived of minivans if the nation adopted tougher fuel economy standards for SUVs and other vehicles, chunks of ice the size of Delaware were breaking away and disintegrating in Antarctica.

The collapse of ice shelves as thick as 640 feet in the coldest continent on Earth is more evidence of global warming, scientists suggest. Many experts insist that to protect the environment and slow the warming trend, vehicle emissions of carbon monoxide--a gas linked to global warming--must be reduced.

Vehicles with poor fuel economy generally produce more carbon monoxide than those with better economy that are driven the same number of miles each year.

The U.S. Senate had a chance to take a big step to promote better fuel economy, but the senators dodged it.

The fuel economy bill advocated by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) and Sen. Ernest F. Hollings (D-S.C.) would have required auto makers to manufacture vehicles that would have a fleetwide average of 36 miles per gallon by 2015.

That would have represented a 38% increase from the 26-mpg average that has been in place more than two decades. It also would, over time, have eliminated exemptions that currently allow light trucks, including sport utility vehicles, to meet a lower average of only 20.7 mpg.

What did get approved was an alternative bill--considered more friendly to the auto industry--that directs the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to set fuel standards. Those standards would be based on their impact on vehicle safety, jobs and the country’s dependence on foreign oil.

The measure was touted by Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and Sen. Christopher S. Bond (R-Mo.). It was Bond who worried about the fate of soccer moms.

Rhetoric was so shrill during the Senate debate that you’d have thought Big Brother was going to snatch all the gas-gulping Expeditions, Yukons and Excursions right out of owners’ garages if tougher standards had been approved.

Opponents practically forecast economic ruin for auto makers and the states that depend heavily on vehicle production.

But there’s evidence that the auto industry already has the technological ability to attain higher fuel economy levels, according to a report issued by the National Academy of Sciences.

Yet the industry and auto employee unions claim stricter fuel standards would eliminate jobs and force consumers out of their safe and comfortable SUVs.

Without their minivans, soccer moms would be forced to drive “a string of golf carts” to transport their kids to their games, said Bond. “I don’t want to tell a mom and dad in my home state they can’t get the SUV they want because Congress decided that would be a bad choice.”

Proponents of higher fuel economy did their own share of blustering after they lost.

“We just missed an opportunity to help make America more competitive to help save money for our consumers and to beat back what has been a reluctance by an industry for years,” Kerry said.

The nation “will have to bow down to OPEC for years to come,” predicted Sen. Richard Durbin of Illinois, a Democrat.

And Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club, charged that the Senate was “handing our nation’s energy security over to the auto industry.”

Ron DeFore of the Coalition for Vehicle Choice, another SUV supporter, argues that safety often gets lost in the fuel economy debate.

Public safety will suffer, he said, if drivers must give up their light trucks and sport utility vehicles to drive smaller vehicles. Various studies conclude, he said, that our emphasis on driving small cars over the last several decades has led to an increase of more than 2,000 deaths in automobile accidents. The heavier the vehicle, the more protection it provides occupants, said DeFore, spokesman for the Washington-based group.

But driving a sturdy SUV doesn’t guarantee occupants’ safety. In 1997 alone, nearly 1,500 people were killed in SUV rollovers. Besides generally polluting at a higher rate, the high-riding vehicles block other motorists’ visibility, and some experts suggest that truck and SUV drivers take more risks behind the wheel because they feel more protected in a larger vehicle.

A new report on auto safety prepared for the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy found that the average SUV or pickup truck is more dangerous than most cars on the road when the risk posed to other drivers is taken into account. The study is based on the private Insurance Institute for Highway Safety’s annual driver death rates report. It also shows that, contrary to conventional wisdom, many small cars have lower fatality rates among their own drivers than do SUVs.

But back on the issue of the environment, scientists say that as temperatures rise, ice shelves in Antarctica continue to collapse with staggering speed. Years from now, the collapse of these shelves could lead to a rapid rise of the sea level.

I must admit I’m more worried about the consequences of global warming and melting icebergs than whether or not the neighborhood soccer mom, or anyone else, has a big enough minivan or sport utility.

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Jeanne Wright cannot answer mail personally but responds in this column to automotive questions of general interest. Write to Your Wheels, Business Section, Los Angeles Times, 202 W. 1st St., Los Angeles, CA 90012. E-mail: jeanrite@aol.com.