Environmental groups seek cleaner vehicles

During the past six months, President George W. Bush has upset environmentalist groups. Within 60 days of his inauguration, Bush had reneged on his campaign promise to force energy companies to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. And, in March, the Bush administration rejected the Kyoto Protocol, which is committed to reducing greenhouse emissions in 37 industrialized nations.\nBush has expressed concerns that emission reductions may have a negative impact on the U.S. economy and has questioned the science behind global warming.\nBut scientists and environmental groups feel that global warming is a serious and real dilemma.\nAlex Veitch, a spokesperson of the Sierra Club, said global warming is the most imminent environmental threat that the world now faces. \nHe said what is particularly alarming to environmental groups like the Sierra Club and the countries trying to piece together the Kyoto Treaty is that the Bush administration would adopt such a stance in spite of the fact that the United States has such a distinct emissions problem. \n"The United States is by far the largest producer of global warming pollution," he said. "We have just over 4 percent of the world's population and we produce 25 percent of the world's carbon dioxide. Clearly, we have a special responsibility to decrease the amount of pollution that we emit."\nGlobal warming is caused when greenhouse gases trap heat that would normally escape through the Earth's atmosphere. \nAuto companies are a major source of carbon dioxide and are a major target for enviromentalist groups.\nVeitch said the transportation sector is the fastest growing source of carbon dioxide emissions in the world. \n"In the United States it accounts for over 20 percent of carbon dioxide global warming pollution," he said.\nThe Sierra Club and Greenpeace have been especially enraged by the proliferation of SUVs. The Ford Excursion, which won Ford the Sierra Club's Exxon Valdez Award for environmental destruction, manages only 12 miles per gallon, well below Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards for cars (27.3) and light trucks (20.7). \nVeitch said he feels extending the CAFE standards is one of the best tools the government has to force the auto manufacturers to lean up their vehicles. \n"The biggest single step we can take for curbing global warming is to make cars and light trucks go further on a gallon of gas," said Veitch. "There's a direct relationship between more SUVs on the road and lower fuel economy. What we need to see is a law changed to include SUVs in a more active way. We would like to see SUVs get the same gas mileage as cars. Then we want to see both SUVs and cars get 40 miles per gallon, which would save about 3 million barrels of oil a day and save about 600 million metric tons of CO2 a year."\nThe Sierra Club believes that auto companies have the technology to comply with more demanding fuel economy standards, but are not applying it to their mass produced models for fear that it would make the vehicles overly expensive and affect sales. Veitch contends that a market with more choices will allow consumers to direct how clean vehicles should be, citing market share as a major incentive for auto manufacturers. \n"They're worried that emission reduction technology will make cars too expensive, where as, in fact, any cost that is applied to the car to improve its fuel economy will be made up very quickly at the gas pump," said Veitch.\nHybrid cars, those with both battery and gas power, are, in fact, emerging from the prototype stages into viable road vehicles. The Honda Insight and Toyota Prius are the first mass-produced hybrid cars to hit the North American market. Though hybrid vehicles are certainly still part of a small, niche market, they are generating significant consumer interest. Matt Nekola, a sales consultant of Royal Toyota in Bloomington said the Toyota Prius, which averages 48 miles per gallon, is selling "as quick as we can get them, on a special order basis only. Toyota gives us a demo unit to give people test-drives and we order the car for them. There's about a four or five month wait right now."\nNekola said he feels that hybrid vehicles have the potential to become mainstream vehicles rather than mere novelty cars that cater to a small, environmentally-minded market. "Mass-producing hybrid vehicles is what Toyota has planned," Nekola said. "They have a total of five hybrid vehicles in their product development line and their going to release a second one in about two more years in the form of a minivan."\nIn a Feb. 6 press release, Honda also announced plans to apply hybrid technology to some of their mass-produced models, which would drastically lower emissions on some of the most widely-driven vehicles.\n"In the near future, we will also be introducing our hybrid technology to the Civic, the best-selling small car in the United States," Honda said in the release. \nIn the past few months, there has been concern that environmental groups have been vandalizing SUVs in an effort to express their distaste for the fuel inefficient vehicles. Instances of spray painting and slashing of tires seemed to be directed at gas-guzzling vehicles. \n"We saw three [SUVs] that got spray-painted on the Bloomington campus at the end of the school year," said Nekola. "I think Bloomington tends to be a hotbed for being pretty emotional about the environment."\nVeitch said the Sierra Club objects to such forms of protest, urging environmentalists to place the pressure on auto manufacturers, not consumers, to clean up vehicle emissions.\n"As for the Sierra Club, we condemn any kind of damage to property," he said. "We need to pressure the auto companies to make cleaner cars."\nThe IU Police Department said there have been many reports of vandalism to SUVs in the past months, but there are no discernable environmental messages on the vehicles.