by Eric Peters (NAPSA)—Nevertrust anyone who actively dislikes cars or SUVs. It’s an indicator of a mentality that also tends not to like mobility—or modernity. That reflection comes after reading the “Use Less Stuff Report”—a nattering Internet compendium of preachy fingerwagging directed against motor vehicles. What eco-activists like the writers of “Use Less Stuff’ don’t understandis that millions of private cars represent not just wealth andindividuality, but a loss of control by Big BroWarming: ther. This is why Fact or advocates of Big Fraud? Government never tire of pushing mass transit, although you'd be hardpressed to ever encounter one of them on the subwayor a dieselbelching bus. Environmentalists had a point in the late 1960s and early 1970s when car exhausts were belching pollutants like carbon monoxide and oxides of nitrogen. But catalytic converters have reduced those tailpipe emissions by upwards of 97 percent. Instead of rejoicing over the Global improvement in air quality, truly green activists are now demanding that auto makers clean up emissions of a major non-pollutant—carbon dioxide, more commonly known as COs. CO:, of course, not only is ab- solutely harmless but the elixir of life itself. Without it, nothing currently living on Planet Earth would survive, including such environmental favorites as spotted owls and old-growth forests. But avid environmentalists, despite overwhelming scientific evidence to the contrary, persist in believing that the small proportion of COz produced by manis causing the phenomenonof global warming. The real reason behind the environmental clamor for the Bush Administration to ratify the Kyoto treaty on climate changeis that it would force drastic cutbacks in the Americanlifestyle since the U.S. would have to reduce energy use by seven percent below its 1990 level. While that would put millions of Americans out-of-work, it also would empty a lot of driveways of the hated SUV's, which environ- mentalists perceive as little more than mechanized demons. In the next few months, you'll be hearing a lot more about the evils of America's love affair with the car and the coming menace of global warming. It's all part of a concerted multi-million dollar effort by hard-core environmentalists and such allies as the Pew Charitable Trust and the United Nations to pressure the Bush Administration to do an about-face on its global warmingstance. The strategy includes a 50 percent jump in federal fuel economy requirements to 37 mpg and forcibly reducing the amount of C02 that can be emitted by power plants and motor vehicles. If they are successful, the United States will sink into near depression, while some of its newly emerging economicrivals of the 21st century—China and India are both exempted from the Kyoto treaty’s requirements—will become economic powerhouses at our expense. No wonder the Senate unanimously passed a resolution in 1997 urging the Clinton Administration not to sign the Kyoto treaty. And no wonder most of organized labor has united against the treaty as well. Eric Peters is a national con- sumer columnist based in Washington, D.C.
