In a move that could prompt extensive reinvention of the automobile, the Bush administration says it is putting most of its energy eggs in the basket of fuel-cell technology.
This could provoke a revolution as complete as the demise of the Stanley Steamer, the popular steam-driven car that in 1906 set a world speed record of 127.66 mph, captivated the driving public and subsequently disappeared from the American road.
George W. Bush's conversion is, I suppose, an astonishing and hopeful turn in a second-generation oil man who nearly went broke in the industry before switching to the more lucrative business of a professional sports franchise. It could lead to the development of vehicles that emit nothing more obnoxious than water vapor and rid the nation of its principal source of airborne pollution. This could be a coonskin trophy Bush could wear on his belt with great distinction. In the process, it could establish for him credentials that have suffered from suspicions he is tone deaf on the environment and indifferent to pollution.
There is a downside. In the 10 to 20 years it may take to perfect fuel cells, Bush seems determined to abandon most attempts to reduce the gas-guzzling propensity of the internal combustion engines that will be around for many years. That could lead to one or two more decades in which greenhouse gases are pumped into the Earth's finite atmosphere at ever-increasing rates, threatening climate changes as radical as those that occurred in the last ice age, but in the other direction.
Bush's initiative also coincides with a steady drop in the average fuel economy of new cars and trucks sold in the United States. A principal factor has been the popularity of light trucks and sport utility vehicles that are, for no good reason, exempt from fuel standards. The result: Today's motor vehicles get the worst gas mileage in 21 years and America, with 5 percent of the world's population, consumes 25 percent of its oil.
Of course, with present gasoline prices a historical bargain, there is even less incentive for people not to buy SUVs and trucks with six- and eight-cylinder engines that make a mockery of fuel efficiency.
Another piece of insanity in this equation is America's insistence on taxing gasoline more lightly than any other industrial nation. This results in retail gas prices that would be the envy of the world if the rest of the world were dumb enough not to understand that cheap gas encourages waste and overpowered engines, contributes to trade deficits, makes the United States vulnerable to blackmail by oil-producing states and, by the way, contributes to fouling the air. Meanwhile, the petroleum-exporting nations are tempted to squeeze the oil teat at will, causing vast American wealth to flow into their treasuries in the 10 to 20 years during which oil will still rule the world.
Steven Nadel, executive director of the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy, is a much-quoted fuel-cells enthusiast. However, he adds: "I think fuel cells are a long-term goal. But the big problem I have is that the Bush administration proposal doesn't seem to address anything for the next 10 years. There's a lot of technology that can go into cars in 2006 and 2007."
The domestic automobile industry makes no secret of its hostility to increased fuel efficiency standards. As far as it is concerned, the less the federal government pokes its nose into the industry's business whether in the fields of safety, fuel efficiency or air quality the better.
Bush's commitment to the environment deserves a healthy degree of watchful skepticism. He has already demonstrated an alarming tolerance for higher concentrations of arsenic in drinking water. And he has shown sympathy for weakening the Clean Air Act in ways that would make it easier for hundreds of older, coal-burning generating plants to go on polluting the atmosphere at rates that produce higher acidity in rain that falls over much of the Northeast.
Picture this acid-soaked region denuded of its forests, and there will be nothing left but smokestacks reaching skyward over its bleak industrial vastness.
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