This Week:

Paired Set of “Quotes” of the Week

A Rare Nygaard Notes Correction

Pollution Cocktails in the SUV CAFÉ

Greetings,

There’s a minor lesson to be learned from this week’s “correction.” The lesson is that something can sound like it makes sense, even when it doesn’t make any sense at all. Or, in the case at hand, that something can sound like it means something quite different from what it actually means. Its probably a good idea to keep this in mind when you are reading the media (including Nygaard Notes). And thanks to reader Betsy for pointing out this wacky error.

There’s another lesson this week, this one in the “Quote” of the Week section. That lesson, one that I attempt to make all the time in these pages, is the lesson that individual comments quoted in the news often make a lot more sense if the reporter manages to make good choices as to the other comments she or he chooses to put next to them. Context, context, context! If you are really well-informed, or just happen to know a lot about the particular subject at hand, you can likely supply the context yourself for a given news story. But, if you’re like most people, you rely on the journalist to dig up and present the relevant facts in the relevant places. The failure to do this is one of the big complaints about journalism in the modern era. Maybe in any era.

The third lesson this week is that one doesn’t want to have too many lessons. That’s why I am biting my tongue (electronically speaking) and refraining from offering yet another “double issue” of the Notes this week. So, that’s all for now.

‘Til next week,

Nygaard

Paired Set of “Quotes” of the Week:

“Quote” #1: Here is Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, commenting on an international survey of tens of thousands of people in 20 countries around the world in the weeks since the official “end” of the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq, which he calls a “war.” His remarks were reported in the June 4th New York Times (“All The News That’s Fit To Print”):

“The war has widened the rift between Americans and Western Europeans, further inflamed the Muslim world, softened support for the war on terrorism, and significantly weakened global public support for the pillars of the post-World War II era—the U.N. and the North Atlantic alliance.”

This is only a partial list of arguments that could be made as to why the invasion was a mistake and/or a crime; the survey did not touch on (arguably more important) issues of the legality or morality of the U.S. campaign.

“Quote” #2: Now, here is Minnesota Senator Norm Coleman, in a May 30th prepared statement announcing his request to the St. Paul city attorney that charges be dropped against 28 war protesters (some of whom are good friends of mine) who were arrested on charges of trespassing while protesting at his St. Paul office on March 24:

“The protesters were simply wrong. With the discovery of mass graves, the welcoming of American forces when Baghdad was liberated and the fact that thousands of American soldiers were not killed . . . it's clear that those who protested America's position on this matter were wrong.”

See “quote” #1.

A Rare Nygaard Notes Correction

This isn’t really a “correction” as much as it is an acknowledgment of a very strange misstatement from three weeks ago. You may recall that in Nygaard Notes #205, in an article entitled “The U.S. and The Undermining of Democracy,” I wrote the following two paragraphs:

“The headline in the New York Times of February 28th read ‘Antiwar Fever Puts Mexico In Quandary On Iraq Vote.’ In the article, the Times reported that the Mexican population in February was ‘overwhelmingly opposed’ to the war, with polls showing opposition of ‘between 70 and 83 percent...’ In Mexico’s case, it was not a matter of stationing troops in the country—after all, Mexico is no closer to Iraq than is the U.S. But Mexico has the good (or bad) fortune to be a member of the United Nations Security Council, from which the U.S. was seeking permission to attack Iraq at the time. (Even though, as I can’t stress enough, we must recall that no decision had been made by the United States to go to war.) Mexico held ‘one of the potentially decisive votes’ in the Security Council, the Times told us.

“The U.S. ultimately saw that this was a vote it could not win, so went to war without it, thus sparing Mexico the agonizing choice between representing its people and committing economic suicide by defying the colossus to the north.”

Now, if you read that closely, you will see that the final sentence says almost exactly the opposite of what I was trying to say. I never would have noticed this if it were not for alert reader Betsy, who wrote me, saying “This isn't the choice, really, is it? These two are the same: representing its people will result in economic suicide. The choice was between representing its people, thereby committing economic suicide by defying the colossus to the north, and ignoring the wishes of its people by submitting to the colossus to the north, thereby not committing economic suicide.”

Betsy is absolutely correct. It is rather odd to me that, even when I re-read it, it SEEMS to make sense. Doesn’t it? Hopefully everyone knew what I was trying to say but, still, I offer my apologies for publishing something so odd.

Pollution Cocktails in the SUV CAFE

The May 3rd NY Times reported that “the average fuel economy of the nation’s cars and trucks fell to its lowest level in 22 years in the 2002 model year.” Since the Times has no “Environmental Section,” this important news was reported in the Business Section.

The Times quotes auto industry spokesperson Gloria Bergquist commenting on the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) report that bore the bad news. Bergquist said “We have 30 models that get over 30 miles per gallon, but the top 10 most fuel-efficient vehicles are less than 2 percent of sales. I would call this report a consumer sales report. It shows what consumers are buying.”

And so it does. What they are buying is gas-guzzling Sport Utility Vehicles and pickup trucks. The Times article goes on to point out that the Bush administration’s EPA, the regulatory agency in charge of these things, has changed the reporting rules, apparently in the hope that situation won’t look as bad as it could. The Times doesn’t appear to like Mr. Bush, which may explain that emphasis, but it’s unlikely that this particular problem would be any better under a Democratic administration, as we’ll see in a moment.

Here are a few points, not mentioned in the article, that might help to put the reported facts and quotations into a meaningful context. First of all, is it just a coincidence that so many otherwise-rational people are buying gas-guzzling pickups and SUVs, despite all sorts of evidence that they contribute to some rather horrible environmental problems? I mean, folks needing to get to work and back could buy a Toyota Prius, which gets 48 miles per gallon, costs about $484 dollars a year to fuel, and spews four tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere each year, instead of a 15-ton Toyota Sequoia SUV, which gets 15 mpg, costs $1,551 a year to gas up, and pollutes at a rate of 12.3 tons per year. But most people go for the latter.

Is this just mass lunacy and shortsightedness? Or does it perhaps have something to do with the fact that each sale of an SUV brings in an average profit of about $12,000 to the auto industry? The huge Ford Excursion, which until recently was getting about 4 miles per gallon in the city (2001 model), is reported to be “one of the most profitable vehicles on the road.” Somebody wants us to buy these things, and we oblige, in large numbers.

But let’s back up a second. Why do we even have SUVs in the first place? They had to be built before they could be bought, after all. Well, in 1975, following the OPEC oil embargo that caused such a panic in this country, the federal government established fuel efficiency rules called “Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFÉ)” standards for new cars. This resulted in more small, fuel-efficient cars being sold, with the result that average fuel efficiency immediately began improving, and kept improving until about 1988. What happened then?

Well, as the “Roaring ‘80s” went on, demand for large cars started to rebound, but it was hard to build the big cars that people wanted that wouldn’t lower the average fuel efficiency below compliance with CAFÉ standards. However, trucks were in a special category, set up to acknowledge the need of mechanics, farmers, carpenters, and others who actually need such vehicles to do their work (as opposed to going to the mall or the clubs).

It’s hard to believe now, as one looks around, but back in the ‘70s not too many people in metropolitan areas owned pickup trucks. They weren’t considered “cool,” since they were associated in the yuppie mind with rural, working-class males, hardly a prestigious “image” for the affluent urbanite so coveted by Detroit. Neither were station wagons or minivans “cool” in this market, since they were perceived as “family” vehicles, and thus not so good for attracting mates. Seeing all this, Detroit set out to make big vehicles that had the power of a truck and the space of a van or station wagon, but were not identified in the consumers’ mind with either of those hard-to-market styles. Voila! The SUV was born.

To explain why the industry became so enamored with these vehicles, I’ll quote Paul Roberts, contributing editor of Harper’s Magazine, from an excellent article in the April 2001 edition of that magazine:

“Most vehicles are built on the unibody model; the SUV is simply a body bolted onto the frame of a pickup truck. That means SUVs are not only faster and cheaper to design and build than cars but cheaper to modify, since each ‘new’ model is simply a restyled body bolted onto the existing chassis and engine. And because SUVs and pickups share engines, frames, and about 70 percent of other major parts, SUVs can be built in existing truck factories, on the same assembly lines, keeping costs down. As a bonus, because regulators still regard SUVs as ‘light trucks’—that is, low-production vehicles intended mainly for working stiffs—they remain exempt from many costly emission controls and fuel-economy requirements...”

Back to the CAFÉ standards: Regular cars are required under the standards to average 27.5 miles per gallon, while “light trucks” only need to average 20.7 mpg. And this is no accident, as Roberts explains:

“In 1999, industry allies in Congress actually passed a bill preventing the department from raising SUV fuel standards. Environmentalists begged President Clinton to veto the bill and even found enough Senate votes to support a veto. But in September 1999, Clinton, fearful of costing Al Gore Michigan, signed the measure into law—at 9:00 P.M. on a Saturday.”

While auto manufacturers, surprisingly, don’t spend as much money on advertising SUVs as you might think (less than they do for midsize sedans, for example) the advertising they do has been highly successful. So successful, in fact, that the demand for these vehicles quickly became high enough that none of the above cost-saving factors had to be passed on to consumers, leading to the profit bonanza mentioned above. Between 1985 and 1999, SUVs went from 2 percent of all new car sales to nearly 20 percent, and it didn’t stop there; in 2001, for the first time, the sales of “light trucks” (including SUVs) exceeded sales of regular cars in the United States.

Kind of a manufacturer’s dream, is what it is. The SUV, in the words of one industry analyst, is “the best thing that ever happened to Detroit.”

Freedom to Commit Suicide?

So, what does a Free Market society do when millions of individuals are making decisions that are arguably hastening environmental disaster? The Times quotes Rick Wagoner, chairman of General Motors, who tells us that “The only solution to this tough dilemma of improving fuel economy and reducing emissions in the intensely price-competitive and very low-cost-energy environment here in the U.S. is through technology.” After all, chimes in industry spokesperson Bergquist, “the industry can not force consumers to buy fuel-efficient vehicles.”

Certainly not. In order to keep our “freedom” to destroy ourselves, Free Market ideology says, we’ll have to count on “technology.” And the people in charge of developing the “technology” that will save us are, conveniently, the very same people who are making immense profits off of our purchases of that technology. So there’s a system here. And that system has brought us, among many other things, the worst auto fuel efficiency in 22 years, as we can read in the paper, in the Business Section.