Molly Ivins June 28

AUSTIN, Texas — So, fellow Texans, how are we feeling about global warming now? Keep in mind, summer only started June 21. Let's see how we feel by the end of it.

New Texans keep asking in horror, "Is this normal?" No, it is not normal. Those of us who were around in the '50s can tell you this is not even like the seven years we call The Time It Never Rained.

Let's take a look at the causes of global warming and what is, and is not, being done about them. And let's start right here at home, where more than half the vehicles now being sold are sport utility vehicles, a k a SUVs or sport utes.

Funny thing about sport utes — they are legally allowed to produce 5.5 times more nitrogen oxides than cars, not to mention that they guzzle gas the way our poor plants are now guzzling water. This is because Congress allowed the auto industry to exempt sport utes from CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) standards on the ridiculous excuse that sport utes are "light trucks" — the same as those given exemption from fuel and pollution standards because they're used by farmers to haul hay or by painters to tote their ladders.

You will notice that sport utes are not the favored vehicle of the working man; that big sucker isn't called the Suburban for nothing. (I must admit, though, that the idea of being able to seat all your kids about a half-block behind you and to just throw Oreos in their direction whenever noise erupts has a certain charm.)

An excellent article in the current edition of the Washington Monthly by Robert Worth reports that the Environmental Protection Agency has stats showing that sport utes and trucks will account for the biggest increase in greenhouse gas emissions by the United States during the next two decades and present a significant obstacle to meeting the Kyoto global-warming accords.

Of course, the Senate has already thrown a fit about the Kyoto accords, under which the United States would reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to 7 percent under 1990 levels over the next 15 years. I say let's force the Senate to meet in Wichita Falls all summer.

But what is the poor auto industry to do when people just love those sport utes? According to Worth's article, Ford makes as much as $15,000 on every Expedition it sells, which is precisely why the auto industry created the sport-ute market by pumping a billion dollars a year of advertising into it.

You've seen those ads; would you ever guess in a million years from watching them that most of those behemoths are used to run to the grocery store? From the ads, they appear to be akin to eagles, found only on remote mountain peaks.

As though Congress' craven failure to enforce CAFE standards weren't bad enough (do we think the auto industry's campaign contributions have something to do with this?), the Capitol Hill Gang has a new anti-environmental ploy. They got burned two years ago trying to destroy the EPA and repeal environmental laws, so now they just slip anti-enviro stuff onto other bills as riders. They are using budget riders attached to must-legislation like the budget bill and highway bill to do all kinds of damage.

Another favorite is the budget cut, reducing or eliminating funding to cripple federal agencies that enforce the environmental laws. Why repeal them when you can just make sure they're not enforced?

Among the easy riders recently devised: a new Air Force bombing range in Idaho's beautiful Owyhee Canyonlands; a road built through a wildlife refuge in Alaska; commercial fishing permitted in Glacier Bay; new mining rules blocked; higher logging levels in the Alaska's Tongass National Forest; motorboats permitted in parts of Minnesota's Boundary Waters Canoe Area; undermining the clean-air provisions for national parks, and on and on.

These measures were never proposed, debated or voted on in committee or on the House or Senate floor. This is legislation by stealth of measures that could never have withstood public scrutiny.

And worse is yet to come: Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va., wants to freeze the CAFE standards for cars and trucks, while Rep. Joe Knollenberg, R-Mich., would ban all federal efforts to cut global-warming pollution until the Kyoto treaty is submitted to the Senate — where it will die, of course.

This effort to repeal CAFE standards is especially maddening because the auto companies are, naturally, whining that they can't possibly meet higher fuel or emission standards even though Honda is already selling a ULEV (ultra-low-emission vehicle) in Europe and Japan, and all the automakers are developing them. Worth drove a Toyota Prius hybrid electric vehicle that gets 850 miles on a single tank of gas — but it's only on sale in Japan.

Worth reports that the Society of Automotive Engineers did a survey at their 1996 convention and found that the majority believe that hybrid vehicles will be 40 percent of the market in 10 years. And guess who's against that? The American Petroleum Institute, natch.

Molly Ivins is a columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. To find out more about Molly Ivins and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.

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