Is Once Too Much to Ask?

Just one morning, I'd like to wake up, look at newspaper and read a story about how the Bush Administration has taken a step, even a baby step, toward seriously combatting America's oil addiction. It's a good thing I haven't been holding my breath.

Today we learn, via the New York Times' Danny Hakim, that the Administration (in this case, the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration and the Office of Management and Budget) has decided to drop from its soon-to-be-released fuel economy standards rewrite any requirement for fuel efficiency in Hummer H2s and other gigantic SUVs.

Of course I'm not surprised at this news ... I was much more surprised back in 2003 when reports came out that regulation of super-SUVs was even on the table. But I am disappointed. Industry and other officials told the Times that the decision was made to leave the giant vehicles free from regulation because "the impact of the tougher requirements would have been borne almost solely by the increasingly troubled domestic auto industry, a concern for the administration."

There's a reason the foreign car companies like Honda and Toyota wouldn't have been affected by regulations on mega-guzzlers - they don't see the need to manufacture behemoth "off-road" vehicles so suburbanites can drive them to the grocery store (they can't drive them much beyond that since it's too expensive to fill the gas tanks).

The article stresses that the revised fuel efficiency plan is still in draft form, and that final revisions may include a requirement for Hummers and other beasts of their ilk. So I guess this must be one of those "test balloons" they speak of, to gauge reaction. Color me reacted. Allowing Hummers, Excursions, and other models of super-SUV to go unregulated is nothing short of nonsensical. When the original regulations were developed in the 1970s, as the Times points out, trucks of this size were used largely for commercial purposes, and there were relatively few of them - that is no longer the case, and closing the loophole would be a concrete and immediate way to decrease American dependence on foreign oil, reducing pollution emissions, and hopefully drawing us back from the brink of Hummer-mania.

I hope that the final version of the efficiency revision plan - which does include some very healthy steps, like extending regulations to light trucks and smaller SUVs - will contain a provision mandating some efficiency standards for the largest SUVs. I wish that we could depend upon Detroit to undertake those standards without a government mandate, but sadly the concept of good stewardship seems to have eluded them here.

I wish we could depend upon American consumers not to purchase gas-guzzling monster-trucks, but while the trend has been in that direction, there are still too many swimming against the current. Government must play a role here, as it has done with cars and will soon begin doing with light trucks. Giant SUVs do not deserve a special regulation-free zone in America, and this Administration ought to act now, while it has the opportunity.