Americans' continued purchases of SUVs and light trucks really are a problem. Oil purchases are essentially the only form of financial support the simplistic economies of the despotic Middle Eastern countries have. It's not like the Saudis and Saddam are making a killing off of their fashion industries and brilliant management consulting firms. SUV's and light trucks are all so fuel inefficient that their mere existence on our roads guarantees our continued dependence on Arab Oil.
25% of imported oil (2.8 MM barrel/day or 19% of all oil used in US) comes from the Persian Gulf - the place that is causing us problems like 9/11 and making us send our relatives and friends off to die in gas attacks in the desert.
To eliminate our need for those 2.8MM daily barrels of Persian Gulf oil via automobile efficiency only, without changing any other lifestyle habits, we would have to increase fuel efficiency (CAFE standards) by about 36% - to 37.4 MPG for cars, and 29 mph for SUV's/light trucks.
At present, there are fourteen cars on the market* that arrive at that goal.
There is not one SUV or light truck on the market that hits the mark. - Well, perhaps one that maybe squeaks in - the spunky Toyota RAV4 (such a big favorite among the SUV drivers) with city/hwy mpg of 25/31.
So the existence of SUV's and light trucks on the market is undeniably a problem, despite any slippery, apologist PR-man arguments to the contrary. If they are on the market, we are buying Persian Gulf oil. We are buying oil from the counties whose people brought us 9/11, and we are keeping the oil economy alive and flowing in Saddam's neighborhood
Q. Why is Sao Tome and Principe one of the poorest countries in the world when it is sitting on 4 billion barrel of high-quality oil? A. Because no one buys oil from them.
If Americans drove vehicles from this list of fourteen presently available cars (only two of them hybrids), we would eliminate the need to buy any oil from the Middle East. The free flow of money for radical Islam and for dangerous governments like Saddam Hussein's would be choked to a trickle. We wouldn't have to spend $200 billion and untold lives toppling evil oil-fed despots, they would wither and fall as we stopped feeding them.
Yes, our friends the Saudis and the Kuwaitis would have to build real economies, and maybe even introduce democracy. And the oil companies would recognize reduced profits as world oil prices slipped. I'm sure most Americans will weep less for such triad's fates than for those of our brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers who are off to die in the Iraqi desert.
Only with the most desperate exertion of logical contortionism can you begin to deny it - the ownership of an SUV puts you in a club that actively guarantees continued US imports of Persian Gulf oil, and makes you an active financial supporter of the undemocratic, brutal, and dangerous regimes of the Middle East - and the terrorism and war they bring us.
From Theory to Reality.
Does that mean that stopping the sale of SUV's tomorrow would quickly end our woes in and from the Middle East. No. Quite frankly, it would not. Realistically, eliminating fuel inefficient vehicles alone, as hard as that would be, is not an effective strategy for quickly ending our dependency on Persian Gulf oil. Even if no vehicle getting fewer than 38 mpg were ever sold again in the US, it would take 20 to 40 years to get all the gas-guzzlers off the road, given a realistic estimate of how quickly cars are retired from service in the US.
First, simply reducing consumption would not stop purchases of oil from the Middle East. Clearly the reduction in consumption would have to be pursued to enable us to enact an embargo of Persian Gulf oil, much like the one we had/have on Iraqi oil at the moment. Even if we really wanted to, we are presently powerless to enact such an embargo now, because we don't have affordable or desirable alternatives to those 2.8MM barrels per day.
Now, even if we stopped buying oil from Persian Gulf nations, there would be a world market. Couldn't the Arab nations just brush off our embargo and sell to other rapidly growing customers like India and China? Realistically, no. The US consumes 50%(!) of the world's oil. An embargo of Arab oil would cripple the Middle Eastern Arab economies overnight. Yes, there has been some diversification of Saudi, etc. portfolios by purchases of stocks and other investments, but with no oil revenues to guarantee future revenues, the Arab nations would go from players to peons in the international finance world. It would be more than the equivalent of the embargo on Cuba. Cuba can trade with every other nation in the world - but the US embargo, because of the power of the US economy, cripples the country.
A 25% reduction of imported oil (a 19% reduction of all US oil consumption) would regain us our control of our Middle East policy and end unshackle our decisions from our oil addiction. We could be more selective, and politically influential with our oil purchases, as we are with Most Favored Nation status. We could reward behavior that complies with our interests, and choke off behavior contrary to our interests - like funding terrorists.
Our present administration knows this, they just don't have any interest in regaining sovereignty via reduction of consumption - this is why we are building a new naval base to protect Sao Tome and Principe, small impoverished islands off the coast of West Africa, and beginning exploitation of the fields there. We want new, compliant suppliers - the Arabs are starting to bite the hand that feeds and we want to kick them to the curb. Unfortunately, development of new supplies takes a long time, and switching costs are significant. We had neither the foresight, nor the taste for prophylactic sacrifice to stop funding the Arabs ten, twenty, or thirty years ago, when it first became apparent they were going to start getting uppity.
With our oil addiction, our situation is that of Old South slaveholders, expanded to the entire country. We are utterly financially dependent on a group we wish to keep as a subject people, performing our will, and working for our benefit. We are also totally physically vulnerable to this "subject" people, should they decide to do us harm. We can't end the relationship, dispossess the "subject" people and isolate ourselves from them, because our lifestyle is dependent on the continued operation of the relationship. So, to perpetuate a system that provides for us via this relationship with a group that (rightfully?) despises us and wishes us harm, we fall back on violence, threats, and bullying. For the past few decades of our Middle East foreign policy, we've been escalating from beatings, to lynchings, to church burnings.
The last 17-18 months of the Bush Administration's "security" policy have been desperate lashing out of a threatened plantation owner class - our 21st century version of KKK posses and cross-burnings, "Know your place (sand)niggahs, or there's gonna be some strange fruit a-hanging."
We don't want to create a new world order with this present war, we just want the same one back, so we can go back to sipping mint julips while Uncle Mohammed Tom tips his hat, smiling, and says, "Yessuh".
Unfortunately, there is little indication that we will succeed in this effort via our present ventures of global anti-terrorist war, a new invasion of Iraq, and the significant constriction of civil liberties domestically. Very likely, we will come out of this era, not with kow-towing Arabs doing our bidding, but with increased terrorism, exacerbated international instability, mounting war debts, and n America with few of the liberties we used to think were inalienable fully intact.
If we wish to get back to a peaceful world where we can maintain our accustomed modicum of control, we need to end our vulnerable dependency on our supposed subject providers. We need to recognize that the price of going to the Middle East for oil like desperate junkies is ongoing war and terrorism. We need to eliminate our dependence on oil, decouple foreign policy from energy policy, and staunch the flow of money to areas of the world that drive us to war every decade or so.
Since we Americans are unlikely to actually make sacrifices in our accustomed lifestyles, we need new technology to end our oil addition quickly. We need a radical departure from oil consumption, so new cars consume not four or five or even two gallons of oil for every 100 miles they drive, but zero. We need a hydrogen energy economy, fueled by solar, wind, and other renewable energy sources. We need to quickly end our plantation owner relationship with oil and its producers and create an energy economy that supports healthy economies, healthy governments, and healthy societies. Otherwise, we are damned to spend our lives surrounded by lynch mobs - either as participants, passive supporters, or perhaps, one day, as its victims.
*Top fuel economy among 2003 model cars, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. Mileage is city, then highway, then combined: 1. Honda Insight (electric-gas hybrid, manual) 61/68/64 2. Honda Insight (automatic) 57/56/56 3. Toyota Prius (electric-gas hybrid, automatic) 52/45/48 4. Honda Civic (electric-gas hybrid, manual) 48/47/48 5. Honda Civic (automatic) 46/51/48 6. Volkswagen Jetta Wagon (diesel, manual) 42/50/45 7. (Three-way tie) Volkswagen New Beetle, Volkswagen Golf, Volkswagen Jetta (all diesel with manual transmissions) 42/49/45 8. Toyota Echo (manual) 35/43/38 9. (Three-way tie) Volkswagen Golf, Volkswagen Jetta, Volkswagen Jetta Wagon (all diesel with automatic transmissions) 34/45/38 10. Volkswagen New Beetle (diesel, automatic) 34/44/38
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