GEORGE F. WILL THE WASHINGTON POST
Making a moral case against SUVs?

November 27, 2002
Environmentalism, which is sometimes a subcategory of moral exhibitionism, now is the faith of some clerics asking "What would Jesus drive?" These divines know he would not drive any of the sport utility vehicles (SUVs) that will be about 52 percent of the new vehicles bought this year by American sinners.
Opponents of SUVs are nothing if not intellectually nimble. The "WWJD?" preachers say SUVs are polluting God's creation. Others say SUVs harm the war against terrorism because they burn too much gasoline, thereby benefiting oil-exporting Middle East regimes that support terrorism. And critics have said SUVs are unfairly safe because, being big and heavy, they protect passengers in crashes with the sort of smaller vehicles that environmentalists want to shoehorn Americans into.
The "WWJD?" clerics - who think Christianity is not just good news, it also is good scientific and economic policy analysis - favor stricter federal fuel efficiency standards. The Corporate Average Fuel Economy, or CAFE, program, begun in 1975 after the OPEC oil embargo, required each manufacturer's fleet to have a sales-weighted miles per gallon average of 19 by 1978, increasing to 27.5 by 1985, where it remains today.
In March, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., proposed a 50 percent increase in CAFE standards for cars and light trucks, which include SUVs. The Senate rejected the measure, 62-38. Andrew N. Kleit, professor of energy and environmental economics at Penn State, writing in Regulation magazine, explains why much stricter standards would be environmentally and economically harmful.
Foreign manufacturers regard the fines imposed for failure to meet CAFE standards as a tax, which they routinely pay. But U.S. manufacturers, fearing civil damages and stockholder suits, comply. Much stiffer standards would force U.S. manufacturers to reduce the large-vehicle component of their fleet mix. The result? A scarcity of domestic SUVs. American consumers would buy more foreign SUVs. The mix of vehicles on America's roads would change less than advocates of tougher CAFE standards assume.
More stringent standards would decrease the per-mile cost of driving. Kleit says, "The latest estimates are that for every 10 percent increase in fuel efficiency, people increase their driving by 2 percent." Hence increased CAFE standards would increase the number of miles driven, and perhaps the amount of emissions.
Furthermore, tougher CAFE standards would increase the cost of cars, while decreasing the attractiveness to consumers of the mix of cars for sale. These would be disincentives for owners to trade in their older cars. The result? Less fuel-efficient cars on the roads longer.
SUVs trigger the anti-automobile reflex among some liberals, who seem to resent the emancipation of the masses from dependence on government (public transportation). CAFE standards, like much of the environmentalists' agenda, advance modern liberalism's agenda of expanding government supervision of personal choices. That agenda makes many environmentalists and liberals resistant to good environmental news.
Writing in The Brookings Review, Gregg Easterbrook says: "Arguably the greatest postwar achievement of the U.S. government and of the policy community is ever-cleaner air and water, accomplished amidst population and economic growth." The Clinton administration's Council on Environmental Quality noted that between 1976 and 1997, population increased more than 25 percent, GDP more than doubled, vehicle-miles traveled grew about 125 percent - and air and water became much cleaner.
Thanks to better technology and sensible regulations, today's new cars produce less than 1 percent of the emissions produced by 1970 cars. In the 1980s, Los Angeles averaged 70 "stage one" ozone warnings a year. Los Angeles has not has such a warning for two years. Yet instead of taking deserved bows for their contribution to such progress, many environmentalists encourage doomsday thinking, partly because, as Easterbrook writes:
"Environmental lobbyists intent on raising money have a stake in spinning everything in alarming terms. Everyone is aware that corporate lobbyists have financial stakes in the positions they advocate. Why the same isn't understood about environmental lobbyists numbers among the small mysteries of our moment. And when environmental lobbyists depict all news as bad, most of the media reflexively echo this line."
As to the "WWJD?" clerics' question, Jesus reportedly arrived in Jerusalem on a fuel-guzzling and high-pollution conveyance, a donkey. For millennia, before automobiles arrived to offend liberals, quadrupeds ruled the streets. A century ago in fragrant New York City, the healthiest of the 150,000 horses each put up to 25 pounds of manure each day onto the streets, to the delight of swarms of flies, or in stables - most blocks had one - filled with urine-soaked hay. In dry weather, traffic pounded manure to dust that penetrated noses and houses.
Then automobiles, and especially SUVs, spoiled paradise.

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I find the following excerpts especially significant:

"SUVs trigger the anti-automobile reflex among some liberals, who seem to resent the emancipation of the masses from dependence on government (public transportation)".

"Environmental lobbyists intent on raising money have a stake in spinning everything in alarming terms".

"Thanks to better technology and sensible regulations, today's new cars produce less than 1 percent of the emissions produced by 1970 cars. In the 1980s, Los Angeles averaged 70 "stage one" ozone warnings a year. Los Angeles has not has such a warning for two years. Yet instead of taking deserved bows for their contribution to such progress, many environmentalists encourage doomsday thinking".

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Evironmentalists do not care about the environment. They want CONTROL (eliminate the emancipation that our vehicles allow), DONATIONS (by perpetrating alarmist lies), and POWER (by supporting class warfare through envy).

Face it, most people who do not like SUVs feel that way because they cannot afford or justify an SUV in their lives. The SUV driver is successful and independent. Such attributes anger the liberals who want failure and dependence to be on the rise among Americans.

Envious, failing, dependent Americans support bigger government and more powerful Political Action Groups, such as the Environmentalists. This support, in turn, will produce the tools of revenge these whiners need to prevent the rest of us from reaching our potentials.

To hell with the cry babies and their liberal hate mongers. Drive big, live large, drink deep, go far, and live a full life. If anything, just do it to p*** them off.

go here to read a series of articles that give a picture of the power structure needed to support the life that ominvore wants Americans to live. Of course, little mention is made of the effects on the world's people by the efforts to secure luxurious comfort for those Americans who can afford it.

http://www.race-dezert.com/index1.html

I received this email and I thought I'd share it. Read this and tell me what you think. Sorry, I know its long.

++THE INFORMED PROGRESSIVE++
(www.informedprogressive.com)

To understand motivations for the war on Iraq, one must keep in mind how those who guide Washington's foreign policy view America's future role in the world...

++++A View Of Our Future
There is always a divide between political rhetoric and actual policy, but it is worthwhile to examine particular cases to see how wide the divide is. During his 2000 campaign, President Bush claimed that "the United States must be humble... We must be proud and confident of our values, but humble in how we treat nations that are figuring out how to chart their own course." Around the same time, in September 2000, current Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and VP Cheney's current Chief of Staff I. Lewis Libby were helping to develop a document that sets out prospective U.S. foreign policy goals, entitled "Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century." This document states that the US must continue to "discourage...advanced industrial nations from challenging our leadership or...even aspiring to a larger regional or global role...[To achieve this, the US] must retain the preeminent responsibility for addressing...those wrongs which t!
hreaten not only our interests, but those of our allies or friends, or which seriously unsettle international relations." The report also urges Washington to develop the capability to "fight and win multiple, simultaneous major theater wars" and at the same time "perform the 'constabulary' duties associated with shaping the security environment in critical regions": maintain "nuclear strategic superiority" by developing smaller "bunker-buster" nuclear weapons and resuming nuclear testing; develop the "'Star Wars' global missile defense system"; and "control the new 'international commons' of space and 'cyberspace' and pave the way for the creation of a new military service - US Space Forces - with the mission of space control".
http://www.counterpunch.org/dixon0911.html
http://www.newamericancentury.org/Rebuildi...casDefenses.pdf

So what are the underlying causes?, one might ask. Why must the US military be ready for "multiple, simultaneous" wars?

++++Peeling Away More Rhetoric
The policies articulated above are addressed with considerably less gloss by Marine Corps Commandant General A.M. Gray in a 1990 military publication. The end of the Cold War will only reorient our security policies, he advises, but not change them significantly. "In fact, the majority of the crises we have responded to since the end of World War II have not directly involved the Soviet Union," a fact that can now not only be conceded, but must be stressed, to ensure that we may act as before when there are "threats to our interest." The North-South (developed states vs. Third World states) conflict is the major fault line: "The underdeveloped world's growing dissatisfaction over the gap between rich and poor nations will create a fertile breeding ground for insurgencies. These insurgencies have the potential to jeopardize regional stability and our access to vital economic and military resources. This situation will become more critical as our Nation and allies, as well!
as potential adversaries, become more and more dependent on these strategic resources. If we are to have stability in these regions, maintain access to their resources, protect our citizens abroad, defend our vital installations, and deter conflict, we must maintain within our active force structure a credible military power projection capability with the flexibility to respond to conflict across the spectrum of violence throughout the globe. Crucially, we must maintain our "unimpeded access" to "developing economic markets throughout the world" and "to the resources needed to support our manufacturing requirements." We therefore need "a credible forcible entry capability," forces that "must truly be expeditionary" and capable of executing a wide variety of missions from counterinsurgency and psychological warfare to the deployment of "multidivision forces." We must also bear in mind the rapidly increasing technological advances in weaponry and their availability to the n!
ew regional powers that will be springing up throughout the Third World, so that we must develop military capacities exploiting the far reaches of electronics, genetic engineering and other biotechnologies, and so on, "if our Nation is to maintain military credibility in the next century."
http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/dd/dd-c01-s08.html

In this context, we can then examine the invasion of Iraq...

++++The Importance of Controlling Oil
Robert Mabro, board member of the British oil firm International Petroleum Exchange observes: "Powerful US lobbies want to undermine Saudi Arabia’s leading role in the world petroleum market and reduce its share of world exports. For this reason, they are promoting oil developments in West Africa, suggesting to *****ia that it should leave OPEC, encouraging Russian private oil companies to maximise production, and are pinning great hopes on the Caspian. They also hope that President Chavez of Venezuela will be overthrown and replaced by a government willing to maximise oil production. More importantly in this context, they would like to install a friendly regime in Iraq who will open the doors to foreign oil companies, increase oil output and contribute to this strategy of diversification. Thirdly, the US objectives regarding an intervention in Iraq are not limited to the removal of President Saddam and his weapons of mass destruction. If successful, the USA will acquire b!
oth a military and a political base in the heart of the Middle East from where they will be able to exercise greater leverage on all the neighbouring countries - Iran, Saudi Arabia and the rest of the Gulf oil-exporting countries, as well as Syria and Jordan. A military presence in Afghanistan, Iraq and some Central Asian Republics give the USA strategic advantages vis-à-vis both Russia and China. Clearly the issues at stake go well beyond oil. The immediate effect of any intervention will inevitably be an interruption of oil supplies from Iraq. The impact on oil prices will depend however on a number of circumstances: the duration of the interruption, whether the oil market is in a state of glut or shortage at the time of the US attack, and whether additional supplies from other countries or from the US strategic stocks are made immediately available or not. If the military intervention succeeds in putting in place a regime in Iraq that is on the one hand friendly to the!
USA and on the other hand able to keep the country united and peaceful, the Iraqi upstream oil sector will be open to foreign oil companies, with the lion’s share of contracts going perhaps to American companies. Oil production will grow significantly after a time lag of, say, three years."
http://www.oxfordenergy.org/commentaug02.html

++++In Their Own Words: The Importance of Controlling Oil
In testimony to Congress in 1999, General Anthony C.Zinni, commander in chief of the US Central Command, testified that the Gulf Region, with its huge oil reserves, is a "vital interest" of "long standing" for the United States and that the US "must have free access to the region’s resources." "Free access," it seems, means both military and economic control of these resources. This has been a major goal of US strategic doctrine ever since the end of World War II. Prior to 1971, Britain (the former colonial power) policed the region and its oil riches. Since then, the United States has deployed ever-larger military forces to assure "free access" through overwhelming armed might. "It's pretty straightforward," said former CIA director R. James Woolsey, who has been one of the leading advocates of forcing Hussein from power. "France and Russia have oil companies and interests in Iraq. They should be told that if they are of assistance in moving Iraq toward decent government, !
we'll do the best we can to ensure that the new government and American companies work closely with them." But he added: "If they throw in their lot with Saddam, it will be difficult to the point of impossible to persuade the new Iraqi government to work with them." Indeed, the mere prospect of a new Iraqi government has fanned concerns by non-American oil companies that they will be excluded by the United States, which almost certainly would be the dominant foreign power in Iraq in the aftermath of Hussein's fall. Representatives of many foreign oil concerns have been meeting with leaders of the Iraqi opposition to make their case for a future stake and to sound them out about their intentions. Officials of several major firms said they were taking care to avoiding playing any role in the [public] debate in Washington over how to proceed on Iraq. "There's no real upside for American oil companies to take a very aggressive stance at this stage. There'll be plenty of time!
in the future," said James Lucier, an oil analyst with Prudential Securities. But with the end of sanctions that likely would come with Hussein's ouster, companies such as ExxonMobil and ChevronTexaco would almost assuredly play a role, industry officials said. "There's not an oil company out there that wouldn't be interested in Iraq," one analyst said.
http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/oil/2.../2002/08jim.htm

++++How Far They'll Go: Indonesia's Killing Fields and Int'l Oil
An internal CIA research study [of General Suharto's rise to power in the mid-1960s] called it "one of the worst mass murders of the 20th century" and compared it to "the Nazi mass murders during the Second War." Estimates by Amnesty International and others report that 500,000 to 1 million people -- mostly landless peasants -- were slaughtered under the direction of Suharto and the [Indonesian] army. In 1967 Suharto established himself as president and launched the "Orde Baru" (New Order), setting up a fascist regime ruled by terror and torture that only began to reform in the last decade. The benefits of Suharto's bloodshed to American oil companies are no secret. A recent report published by the US Commerce Department notes that Indonesia's "oil boom did not really begin, however, until 1967 when Indonesia pioneered the production-sharing contract and the 'New Order' launched the country on the road to economic and political stability." In the wake of what the CIA pa!
per calls "one of the ghastliest and most concentrated bloodlettings of current times," multinationals such as Phillips Petroleum, Mobil Corp., and others signed production-sharing contracts with Indonesia's state oil company in 1968 -- the same year the London Economist called the killings a "holocaust." Phillips spokespersons say that when the company operates in a country, it looks at "the stability of the government and the political situation in general." C. Phillip Liechty, CIA desk officer in Indonesia during the invasion, saw the reports coming out of East Timor (where Indonesia's armies subsequently invaded). "There were people being herded into school buildings by Indonesian soldiers and the buildings set on fire," he told award-winning journalist John Pilger. People who tried to get out were shot, "with most of the people being burned alive. There were people herded into fields and machine-gunned, and hunted in the mountains simply because they were there. We!
knew the place was a free-fire zone." Funds from oil companies played an important role in supporting the military leaders who carried out the bloodshed. "Oil revenues were vital for the Suharto regime," says a recent U.S. Library of Congress study sponsored by the Department of Army, because these resources helped the regime with "political stability."
http://www.zmag.org/ZMag/articles/may96udin.htm

++++Connecting The Dots
Writes Susan Davis: "[The war in Iraq is] about the extension of such imperial control around the globe -- and Central Asia and the Middle East are critically important to that control. The country or coalition that dominates Central Asia and the Middle East will control the flow of oil. Central Asia accounts for about sixty percent of the world's GNP. That's what an empire is -- controlling basic resources and making decisions about their use worldwide, unchallenged, long-term. U.S. military bases and access agreements in the Gulf and Central Asia have been growing quickly, especially in the last year. American troops are already moving very quickly into Djibouti in the Horn of Africa (New York Times, November 17, 2002); a few weeks ago the New York Times reported that about one-third of Kuwait has been sealed off so it will be accessible to the U.S. troops being deployed there. This buildup is not for military convenience; it is intended as permanent, as are all the ne!
w bases in the Central Asian 'stans': Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Kazakhstan."
http://www.counterpunch.org/davis1123.html

RELATED TOPICS

++++And Then We Get To Pay For It
Byron Dorgan, a North Dakota Democrat, took to the Senate floor on February 27 2002 with an impassioned plea for a small federal subsidy that has fueled an explosion of activity in the wind-power industry. The so-called wind production tax credit (PTC) is as tiny as subsidies go--over a decade it has cost roughly $55 million--and remarkably effective. Wind is the fastest-growing energy industry in the world, and last year was the US wind-power industry's best ever, with power capacity equivalent to that of roughly six coal-fired power plants coming online--minus coal's pollution. Judged just on its merits, this would probably pass with bipartisan support. But Congress is tentatively committed to gargantuan new subsidies to coal, oil, gas and nuclear power--the only disagreement so far is exactly how obscenely enormous they will be. So the five-year wind PTC will be held hostage, to provide green window dressing for less admirable legislation. The Republican energy plan, to!
uted in the President's State of the Union address, would dole out $35.6 billion over ten years--or about $125 per American--to the oil, gas, coal and nuclear industries. The Democratic Senate energy bill is larded with almost as many tax-funded mega-giveaways to polluters. By contrast, the wind PTC has, to date, cost every American about 19 cents.
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020...15&s=bivens&c=1

++++Environmental Effects of Oil Well Destruction During the Gulf War
If Iraq is attacked, it is likely that Iraqi soldiers will again act to destroy oil wells, as they did in 1991. The United States Naval Academy reports that the previous oil well destruction caused the following damage: A 1-2 cm surface layer containing all deposits from smoke fall-out downwind of burning wells; 76 lakes of oil formed from gushing wells containing 50 million barrels of oil; up to 11 million gallons of oil were released into the Gulf between January and May of 1991; the average sea water temperature decreased 2.5 degrees Celsius; approximately 1million gallons of oil washed ashore; 80 kilotons of nitrous oxide were released; 133 million tons of carbon dioxide were released.
http://www.usna.edu/NAOE/courses/en411/holland

++++Clear Air Restrictions Eased
The Environmental Protection Agency issued regulation changes on Friday to clean-air rules, easing restrictions to provide utilities and refinery manufacturers more flexibility in installing pollution-emission controls. These changes will clearly benefit the industries, who will now be free to modernize plants without the hassle of updating anti-pollution equipment, but they in no way reflect the changes that should be made to protect the best interests of the environment and public. Lowering standards for businesses will not serve as a way for our country to meet air-quality standards, although the EPA believes allowing more flexibility will encourage emission reductions. There can be good news found in the fact that a group of attorney generals from Northeast states, including New York and Connecticut, plan to file a lawsuit intending to reverse the decision. Some of the changes include allowing factories to calculate emissions on a plant-wide basis (instead of by indivi!
dual pieces of equipment), to rely on the highest historical pollution levels in the past decade when deciding whether the factory's pollution output requires increased control, and to exempt the output of secondary contaminants that result from new pollution controls for other emissions, according to the Associated Press. These changes were sought by the utility, coal and oil industries which just happened to be major donors to the Republican campaigns of 2000 and 2002.
http://technicianonline.com/read/tol/opini...ion/006455.html

Ahh, the Fundamental Difference between Conservative and Liberal thought processes. I DO NOT want Americans to live in any manner as defined by me. I DO want the choices as wide open as possible, as achievable as human potential allows.

Allow me to suggest a plan to the rest of the world, in as much, as they despise America so much. To all the global purveyors of oil: that they stop selling to America. Do not trade for currency, political favor, foreign aid, or military hardware. That scarce mineral resources be kept from America and any raw material or products that come here be withheld. That all foreign governments prevent their emigrants from reaching our soil. That their best, brightest and most ambitious be kept at home. The plan is that the world would go about its business and forget we exist. Draw us out of the world map, just an empty space on the charts for many generations.

What a huge benefit to the World! The Great Satan America, out of the game. The rest of Earth's inhabitants now free to live up to all their potential! The suppressed global peoples now can now realize their lofty moral goals, unfettered by America's cruelty. The evil empire that invented genocide, global warfare, slavery, racism, immorality, imperialism, substance abuse, pollution, and is rapidly exhausting an entire planet's resources so that only Americans can live in luxury.

Global harmony, no more pollution, hunger, hate, or crime. All species with hand, wing, fin, paw, branch and stalk clasped together in global love and equality. Kind of like OZ with the witches dead.

Because everybody knows that the only humans who are gluttonous for material possessions are Americans. A unique branch of the species. Homo Sapien Sapien Americanus. The rest of humanity does not have the "possessiveness gene". Pure in thought, word, and deed. Never raise a finger against each other, never want more than their neighbor. Giving all and never accepting anything in return. All with one global mission: to be the least of all.

So, if you could push a button and isolate the cause of all the world's misery, would you? Best be quick, because I intend to jam it down with all my strength.

The difference between you and me is that I like being an American and have never spent an instant apologizing for what I am.

Hey you, blue guy, are you getting that? Hello? Bueller?

Right, it's all the Americans' fault...meanwhile:

[*]Hutus slaughtered 500,000 Tutsis in Rwanda
[*]Serbs commit genocide against the Croats
[*]Somalian warlords exterminate their people for control of food donations
[*]Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge murdered over one million people in Cambodia
[*]Nazis exterminated six million Jews and a million gypsies
[*]1.5 million Armenians were murdered between 1915 and 1923 [list].

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Ahh, the Fundamental Difference between Conservative and Liberal thought processes. I DO NOT want Americans to live in any manner as defined by me. I DO want the choices as wide open as possible, as achievable as human potential allows.

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Is it possible that your government lies to you? Are you OK with this?

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To all the global purveyors of oil: that they stop selling to America.

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that's not really possible is it, inasmuch as this is a global market dominated by global corporations? To "not sell" oil to America is to not sell oil.

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What a huge benefit to the World! The Great Satan America, out of the game. The rest of Earth's inhabitants now free to live up to all their potential!

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Would you insist that America withdraw its influence on the rest of the world? We would withdraw our soldiers that support the puppet governments that allow US corporations to dominate local markets at the expense of the local economy? Finish your analogy Omni!

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The difference between you and me is that I like being an American and have never spent an instant apologizing for what I am.

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You've never traveled to the inner city or to other countries. You might find your perspective broadened if you do.