February 17, 2011
By Staff Reporter
Instead, Americans would become more like Europeans, who drove smaller vehicles because of their almost complete dependence on foreign oil.
Those little cars plying the streets of Dublin, London, Paris and Rome seemed to suggest the future of the American highway.
Thirty years later, the vehicle of choice among those who buy American-made cars is the sport utility vehicle, some of which are lucky if they get 15 or so miles to a gallon. Our dependence on Persian Gulf oil has only increased over the years, even as that region produces not just black gold, but avowed enemies of the United States.
All of this is old news. Americans have been buying SUVs in large numbers for more than a decade because they are convinced that they are safer (they’re not) and because U.S. auto companies offer tremendous incentives to buy these monsters. People who criticize this trend, like yours truly, are routinely denounced as anti-capitalist airheads who’d rather hug a tree than get behind the wheel of a Hummer.
But there is good news, at least for those who regard American dependence on Persian Gulf oil as a national security threat. According to recent reports, sales of SUVs declined last year. Some of the bigger SUVs saw sales decrease by double-digit figures. Industry observers believe this is the beginning of a trend.
If you care about America’s national security, you can only hope so, and you can only hope that it’s not too late. Our love affair with bigger and bigger SUVs has played into the hands of our enemies, so many of which happen to be among the world’s biggest oil producers.
More than ever before, we are absolutely vulnerable to blackmail by the despots of the Middle East. They control the flow of the stuff we need, and if they decide to raise prices and freeze-dry our economy, they can do it. If they decide that the world needs to treat their demands with more respect, they can impose another embargo, as they did in the 1970s.
The country’s vulnerability is hardly a secret, but neither the American people nor the U.S. government has done much to acknowledge these unpleasant realities.
Until now. The gasoline price increases of 2005 have made an impression on American consumers (if not the government). In an interview with The New York Times, the head of Toyota’s U.S. operations said that “there’s a lot more awareness [now] of the impact of a gallon of gasoline.”
It’s about time, but let’s see how long that awareness lasts. And let’s see if our “leaders” in Washington take advantage of that awareness by implementing policies designed to reduce oil dependence.
Those of us who remember the 1970s may recall that we were pretty aware of the impact of a gallon of gasoline back then — heck, we waited in line for hours just to get our couple of gallons. That awareness, however, faded, which is why our highways are crowded with SUVs these days.
This renewed awareness comes at a very different time. We are fighting a war in the Middle East. Terrorists from its oil-producing states are even now plotting our destruction. Governments in other oil-rich nations tend to be either corrupt, dictatorial or hostile to U.S. interests. It is fair to say that some of the worst leaders on the planet preside over countries that control the world’s oil supply.
And we keep sending them our money.
These dubious characters couldn’t go on without our money. At the moment, we can’t go on without their oil. But if we got serious about alternative fuel sources, we might see a whole lot of regime changing going on.
The Bush administration, however, prefers to demand nothing from American consumers, save that they continue to consume. The President and Vice President, oil men themselves, regard conservation with a sneer. It’s the sort of thing they associate with wimps and liberals, the kind of people who liked Jimmy Carter’s sweater.
Who else but a weakling would ask the American people to conserve fuel? No, real men tell the American people to spend their money on monster cars that make them feel big and powerful.
Historians, I believe, will be puzzled to explain why, especially after Sept. 11, the U.S. government did nothing to reduce the country’s dependence on oil from the hostile and corrupt governments who control supplies.
They will wonder why nobody in authority considered oil dependence an issue of national security. They will be at wit’s end trying to explain why the U.S. declined to fund a modern Manhattan Project, designed not to reduce cities to ashes, but to power automobiles with something other than oil.
Some Americans today are equally puzzled. If sales of SUVs continue to plummet, perhaps that is a signal that a greater number of Americans share these concerns. And perhaps that will lead to changes in Washington, D.C.
Then again, if the oil producers of the Middle East have any wit about them, we’ll start to see a continued decline in gasoline prices over the next year or so. And perhaps in January, 2007, newspapers will note an increase in SUV sales. And people who talk about conservation and alternative energy sources will again find themselves belittled by the White House.
Then they’ll have us where they want us. Again.