http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/6/25/141833/445
A new series of whimsical public service announcements from the Environmental Protection Agency are lampooning the notion that cars can be made more energy efficient while the ads encourage conservation at home...
In a 60-second version of the public service announcement, a woman named Suzanne says she is concerned about pollution and global warming, but laments the homegrown efforts of her husband, Mark, to cut emissions from the family car. Mark - nerdy, pudgy, harried - is shown rigging up their car, first with a sail, then a microwave contraption using huge satellite dishes, and finally a helium tank with a bulbous hose.
"The E.P.A. says the energy we use in our home can cause twice the greenhouse gases of a car," Suzanne says, adding that she has started buying energy-saving household products.
Buying a cleaner car, or say, a smaller sport utility vehicle, does not appear to be a viable alternative for reducing emissions. The ad ends with a shot of Mark pushing the car down a hill and Suzanne saying, "He still marches to the beat of a different drum." At one point, the car fills with helium, Mark starts talking like Mickey Mouse and two men in the backseat shake their heads and say "Genius!"
Indeed, as the E.P.A. says, energy use at home can cause twice the emissions of a single car. But most families have more than one car and emit roughly the same amount of global warming gases in their vehicles as in their homes, said David Friedman, senior policy analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists, an environmental research and advocacy group.
"With a car, you can cut your fuel use in half by using a hybrid," he said. "You're not likely to cut your electricity use in half by using more efficient appliances"...
In a shorter version of the ad, Mark's car sails down the road - literally - while a narrator says, "there is a practical way to reduce air pollution." Viewers are then directed to a Web site that lists energy- efficient furnaces, computers and dishwashers - in fact, just about everything but cars.
The EPA claims that the ads were done at the initiative of the agency department that deals with homes, and that the department that deals with vehicle emissions wasn't involved. That's a plausible explanation, especially since the advertising agency that created the spot also promotes a program that awards a special designation to manufactures of energy-efficient appliances. Hence, making people more aware of appliances that save energy might increase sales of new furnaces and stoves and dishwashers.
There's another theory, however, that's not just plausible and but even complimentary to the desire to cut emissions from home appliances: the Bush administration may be using this ad campaign to favor one industrial sector over another.
Emissions come mostly from three sources: industrial pollution, mainly connected to manufacturing; fuel emissions, which are the province of the petroleum industry that supplies the fuel and the transportation industry that manufactures the vehicles that burn the fuel; and pollutants released from burning coal, and the largest consumers of coal are utility companies who produce electricity.
The Bush administration has fought tooth-and-nail against attempts to crack down on industrial polluters. They have also fought against raising corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards on auto manufacturers. There are several reasons they've opposed raising CAFE standards, including, no doubt, the influence of Bush Chief of Staff Andrew Card, who is a former lobbyist for the auto industry, and Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, who was a Senator from Michigan, and thus developed extremely close ties to the auto industry. But with Bush and Cheney running this administration, it's also pretty hard to ignore the obvious fact that looser CAFE standards will mean greater gasoline consumption, which is great for the oil industry (including companies like Haliburton that build and maintain the infrastructure needed for oil exploration and refining). Add in our insufficient capacity to meet future electricity needs and the rickety state of our electrical grid (as evidenced by last year's blackout), and there are plenty of reasons for the Bush administration and their political and financial backers to try to convince home consumers of to cut their electricity use.
Cutting home electricity use might help forestall the crisis point at which our demand for electricity far outstrips our generating capacity, it could increase sales for appliance manufacturers, and it doesn't curtail the demand for gasoline. Lowering emissions from home energy use also might lower overall greenhouse gas emissions, thus staving off tightened emission standards that would affect consumer vehicles. Furthermore, mocking the environmental benefits of lowering fuel economy protects the U.S. auto manufacturers, who are far behind Toyota and Honda in developing and bringing to market viable hybrid automobiles, and in attempting to suppress market demand for highly-efficient hybrid cars, they are also firing a salvo at a serious threat to increasing market demand for gasoline to power heavy and inefficient cars and SUV's.
Slowing the increasing demand for electricity might not be advantageous for coal producers or utility companies, but that's the corporate manipulation of government power works. The reason business is so often involved in politics isn't so they can screw over the consumer and average citizens--although there is a decent amount of that, especially by extractive industries and industries like retail and food service which have high labor costs. The main reason most business and corporate interests are involved in politics is so that they can attain comparative advantage relative to their competitors within their sector, and to gain favor for their industrial sector and to pass the costs and tax burdens from their sector on to other industrial sectors. The Bush administration has very close ties to the oil and auto industries. Thus, they'll take care of their own and do their best to pass the costs and risks of greenhouse emissions on to somebody else--in this case, on to the coal and utility industries.
But of course all of that is probably just a crazy theory. As we all know, the Bush administration is probably running those ads because of the President's sincere desire to do everything he can to achieve a cleaner environment and to lessen our reliance on fossil fuel imported from foreign countries.