[Preface: You are not your car. The religious mystics will
tell you that you are also not your clothes or your job, or even your body or
your thoughts. But you are definitely *not* your car.]
The Detroit Project, led by columnist Arianna Huffington, is
making a stir with their TV ad campaign linking SUVs to terrorism. The two ads
(see them at www.detroitproject.com)
dramatize the connection between SUV owners’ big gasoline payments and the
Saudi oiligarchy’s well-documented funding of Islamic extremists.
SUV drivers’ published responses have ranged from puzzlement
to outrage. And from one perspective, their reactions are warranted. SUVs don’t
bomb civilians; minions of Middle East oil sheiks bomb civilians. SUV drivers
don’t prop up Saddam’s regime; oil revenues do. Nonetheless, the explosive
growth of SUVs, in symbol and substance, is now the driving force sustaining
the demand for that oil. This might be excusable if SUVs produce some
significant advance in the human condition, as did food refrigeration or indoor
plumbing. But their popularity is mostly the result of advertising and
government subsidy.
Pulitzer Prize winning investigative reporter Ken Bradshear
reveals this in his book “High and Mighty: The World’s Most Dangerous Vehicles
and How They Got That Way.” He documents Detroit’s cynical manipulation of the
target baby boomer market’s desire for a powerful yet outdoorsy self-image, and
a concern for family safety. Yet the SUV makers know only one in twenty SUVs
ever go off-road, and that the dangers of SUV stiffness and instability more
than offset the safety advantage of their mass (an advantage that decreases
as more SUVs hit the streets.)
Why the intense promotion of SUVs? Simple: the profit margin
on these gas-guzzlers is huge, many times that of the fuel-sippers. Thus,
Detroit will go to great lengths to sustain and protect their new cash cow.
During a two-hour stretch of the World Series last year, I counted nine
commercials featuring SUVs (compared to only one for a sub-compact, the VW
Beetle.) In Washington, the industry’s multi-million dollar campaign
contributions and lobbying efforts have paid off. Not only did Bush oppose even
a paltry increase in fuel economy standards, but his Justice Department lawyers
sued California for trying to improve air quality by imposing its own tougher
standards.
And irate taxpayers take note: the same “light trucks”
loophole which exempts SUVs from car mileage standards also allows buyers of
the heaviest SUVs to write off nearly two-thirds of the purchase cost in year
one, ten times the write off allowed for an identically priced sedan.
In so many ways, America’s dependence on oil is like a drug
addiction. A good thing taken to extreme, oil consumption is driving us to
ever-greater madness, slowly killing us and the things we love while we remain
caught in its grip. What will it take to break that grip? The Detroit Project
ads may be unfair, but they are stimulating a much-needed debate, and hopefully
some serious self-evaluation. Yet they are up against very powerful, entrenched
interests. We need more.
I submit that we need a grassroots movement to make conspicuously
wasteful fuel consumption socially unacceptable, taboo. Public health advocates
have been trying to do this with smoking, countering the effects of decades of
tobacco advertising. An even better model is Mothers Against Drunk Driving.
This group catalyzed a phase shift in public attitudes toward driving while
drunk. DUI now bears severe penalties. More significant, it’s no longer uncool
to ask for (or be) a designated driver.
On behalf of Mother Earth, I am starting MADM: Mother’s
Against Driving Madness. MADM’s goals: laws and traditions that support
responsible driving. MADM says, let’s stop driving ourselves into the hands of
madmen, of Big Oil and Bad Oil, of Saddams and Osamas. Let’s stop driving for
ego gratification, without regard for others. Let’s start driving rationally,
compassionately. Downsize your car; control your thirst for gas. Start today.
Mother’s counting on us.