-Caveat Lector- http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/12/20/1040174396370.html
Print this article | Close this window You'll never get to heaven in a 4WD December 21 2002 UNTIL recently, people who owned four-wheel drives were castigated just because they killed other drivers at a rate three times higher than other motorists, destroyed the planet with their fuel-guzzling hulks and made it impossible to safely back out of a supermarket parking space. Now, in the United States, they also stand accused of funding terrorist training camps, helping Saddam Hussein build weapons of mass destruction - and quite possibly upsetting Jesus. In the country that worships the car, the unfortunate owners of four-wheel drives, or sports utility vehicles (SUVs) as they are called, are under attack by everyone from environmentalists to evangelicals. And the reason is not hard to fathom. They are everywhere. Like Australians, Americans have fallen in love with four-wheel drives and they are buying them in staggering numbers. There are more than 20 million on US roads and sales are set to double in the next few years. They have helped to turn around the fortunes of the American car industry and in no small way kept the sluggish American economy afloat. But in the eyes of their antagonists, SUVs are undermining decades of environmental reform aimed at cleaning up the air in US cities, cutting smog pollution and curbing greenhouse gases. As more and more SUVs hit the roads, the fuel economy rate of new American vehicles has been pushed down from about 10.6 kilometres a litre in the 1980s to about 8.5km a litre. As they burn more fuel, they spew more emissions, at least half as much again as a family car. In the US since September 11, SUV opponents are also trying to link the gas-guzzling vehicles to the debate about the country's dependence on Middle East oil and regimes like those in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Given that cars and trucks devour about 43 per cent of all the US's oil imports, the link isn't too hard to make. Ably assisted by celebrity author Adrianna Huffington and some Hollywood producers, they are raising funds for a series of spoof advertisements designed to shame hapless SUV owners into downsizing. The script for one ad starts with a shot of a mild-mannered four-wheel driver, George, filling his tank. It then cuts to a shadowy-looking oil executive before jumping to shots of a terrorist training camp. "These are the terrorists bankrolled by many of the countries where the oil companies do business so that George can fill up his gas-guzzling SUV," says the voice-over. "Oil money supports some terrible things. If you drive a SUV, you might too." Not so humorous is a new book on the SUV boom written by the former Detroit bureau chief for The New York Times, Keith Bradsher. Provocatively called High and Mighty, the book is a revealing expose of how the unassuming American light truck was transformed into the baby boomers' car of choice. Success, according to Bradsher, came from a combination of terrifying marketing techniques, political lobbying and lack of interest in the environment on the part of the car makers. US car makers spent about $US9 billion ($16 billion) over 10 years marketing four-wheel drives and hiring some of the most aggressive salesmen in the business. In particular, Bradsher tells the tale of the French marketing guru Clotaire Rapaille, who worked with Chrysler to sell its big-selling Jeep Cherokees in the 1990s. The spectacular launch of the Jeep involved a Chrysler executive driving it up the steps of the Detroit convention centre and smashing through a glass window to make his entry to the car show. According to Bradsher, Rapaille's intense research on American car buyers and his devotion to Jungian psychology led him to aim the four- wheel drives' sales pitch at Americans' reptilian instinct to survive rather than the rational merits of the vehicle. Playing on the country's obsession with crime and violence, Rapaille decided the four- wheel drive needed to represent armoured cars for the battlefield of everyday life. He was devastated when the ad agency dismissed his suggestion to buy up the rights to Mad Max for the campaign. Sadly for SUV drivers, Bradsher also reveals that the car companies' market researchers see them as an insecure and vain lot. "They are frequently nervous about their marriages and uncomfortable about parenthood. They often lack confidence in their driving skills. Above all, they are apt to be self-centred and self-absorbed, with little interest in their neighbours or communities." Fortunately for the benighted SUV owners, President George Bush and the Republican Congress are coming to their aid, and, critically, to the aid of the car makers. Despite a big lobbying effort to force the companies to raise the fuel economy of four-wheel drives, the Bush Administration is resisting anything but a token effort. The Administration understands the arguments of the car makers all too well. Bush's chief of staff, Andrew Card, was the chief lobbyist for General Motors just before taking his job at the White House. The Energy Secretary, former Republican senator Spencer Abraham, is from Michigan, home state of the Detroit car industry, and his Senate campaigns have received many car dollars over the years. But the fight between the greens and the car makers is just warming up. Environmentalists argue that four-wheel drives can produce more than five times the smog-creating gases than cars and a lot more greenhouse gases like carbon monoxide. The car makers sell them like family cars but while cars have to meet a fuel economy standard of 11.7km a litre, four-wheel drives have to meet only the standards for "light trucks", 8.8km a litre. When California recently brought in a regulation that encouraged more fuel efficiency by spurring on the production of smog-free cars, the Bush Administration backed the country's car makers in taking the state to court. The makers claim the move was a back-door attempt by California to establish its own fuel efficiency standards in opposition to those laid down by the Federal Government. But even more worrying to the car makers is a Californian law that will come into force in 2004 designed to reduce carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas. Many see the Bush Administration's court action against California as just the start of the battle between that state and Washington over fuel emissions that will affect the future of the four-wheel drive. The car companies defend the vehicles and their fuel consumption by saying they are just giving buyers what they want, bigger cars. "People want power. Consumers want power," said a spokesman for the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers Association. There is a lot of truth in this, as the evangelical environmental network found out. A few weeks ago the network launched a campaign to support fuel efficiency under the slogan "What would Jesus drive?" The early response was a deluge of angry email. The network's last campaign to save the Endangered Species Act had not prepared it for the wrath of the four-wheel- drive owner. The Rev Jim Ball was taken aback. "I'll buy anything I want and I'll crush the planet with my SUV. You're not going to take away my freedom," was one of the responses, he said. Still reeling, Ball was anxious to make it clear, his mission is not an anti-SUV campaign, but merely an "educational" effort to get people to examine their "transportation choices". But critics like Bradsher are unrepentant in their attacks on the four-wheel drive. "As SUVs have multiplied in the United States and beyond, they have fed a highway arms race that has made the world's roads less and less hospitable for car drivers, worsening a trend that hurts safety and the environment alike," he says. "Every year that the United States and the world wait to take action, the problems only become worse." This story was found at: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/12/20/ 1040174396370.html <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance�not soap-boxing�please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'�with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds�is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. 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