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April 1999 The Call of the Wild By Philip Goff

Light trucks—sport utility vehicles (SUVs), pickups and minivans—have become the vehicle of choice for an increasing number of motorists attracted by images of conquering the great outdoors. In the first of a two-part series, Philip Goff explains how SUVs send exactly the wrong signal about fuel efficiency and sustainability.

The economic boom of the 1990s has brought an equal rise in the popularity of light trucks. Since 1992, sales of SUVs alone have doubled to nearly two million per year. Light trucks now represent one-third of all vehicles on the roads and constituted nearly 50 percent of all new vehicle sales in 1997. The largest light trucks symbolize the most self-indulgent characteristics of American culture. Drivers apparently feel that these vehicles are a hip complement to their lifestyle—whether that means thundering through the wilderness or, more usually, commuting or taking the kids to school. Yet the notion that you need two or three tons of steel, rubber, and plastics fused together to create a highly polluting machine simply to move a single person or family around a paved landscape is absolutely preposterous.

SUVs are the perfect expression of a technologically advanced, consumerist culture’s commodification of the natural world. Once confined to being the workhorses for ranchers or farmers, these trucks have been gentrified for use by yuppies and suburbanites yearning for a taste of the natural and the wild. You need look no further than their names: There are “Range Rovers,” “Rodeos,” “Land Cruisers,” “Pathfinders,” “Explorers,” “Expeditions” and “Mountaineers.” Place names from the American West—long glorified for their natural resources, vistas, and recreational opportunities—are prevalent as well: “Durango,” “Dakota,” “Denali,” “Tahoe,” “Sierra,” “Takoma” and “Yukon.” Manufacturers draw on the imagery of these Western landscapes to create new frontiers for Four-by-Four drivers who yearn to escape the monotonous paved landscape of urban and suburban America. Ironically, the grand-daddy of all SUVs, the Chevy Suburban, is, at least, appropriately named.

Covenant of Commodification

The vehicle’s covenant with its master is to bring him or her to nearly any part of the world and through any geological or meteorological extreme. The Wild is thus trivialized as a place to be seen or experienced with little physical, mental, or emotional effort. That heavily polluting light trucks are advertised as the way to experience “nature” is an affront to those who believe that there is a certain truth and spiritual quality to places on Earth that require solely human effort to get to and appreciate.

The commodification of the natural world is clearly evident in the advertising strategies for SUVs and large pickup trucks. These advertisements court the male driver by showing powerful pickups tearing up the Earth and blazing through swamps, deserts, and forests, while safety and reliability in turbulent weather is marketed to women, especially mothers. A television ad for Nissan shows an SUV tearing across a prairie landscape and asks, “Why just own the road when you can own the planet?” A Range Rover ad shows an SUV driving along a narrow road carved from the side of a cliff face in an exotic land and states, “In the Hindu Kush it’s fashionable simply to arrive.” The text goes on to impress the potential buyer with the feeling of security “as you drive around the upper echelons of someone else’s society”—a society, presumably, not quite technologically advanced or fortunate enough to afford the stated $55,500 sticker price. The text of a Toyota Land Cruiser ad declares, “There is perhaps no more powerful force than nature itself. And the Land Cruiser is designed to elevate you into the position of managing that power.” To equate the ability to drive up and down steep slopes or through rutted terrain with the power of a river or the force of hurricane winds is ridiculous, but those being marketed to are people in dire need of a status symbol to show they have achieved some modicum of power in their lives.

Advertisements always show these vehicles in idealized conditions in the great outdoors. They are never displayed caught in traffic or looking for a parking space big enough to fit them. Yet, in reality, most of these light trucks are used for commuting, shopping, or ferrying children around town. According to a 1995 study by the Big Three auto-makers (Chrysler, Ford and General Motors), only 18 percent of all pickups and 13 percent of SUVs are taken off-road at least once a year. Yet, the popularity of Four-by-Fours cannot be doubted. The increasing sales of the light trucks have meant huge profits for auto companies, increasing their power to lobby against any new government regulations that could affect the status quo.

Fuel hyper-inefficiency

Decades of lobbying efforts by the auto industry have allowed light trucks to remain exempt from vehicle-emission and fuel-efficiency regulations. These regulations came about in the mid-1970s when lines at the gas pump and continual price increases were the norm. In response, the government set Corporate Average Fuel Efficiency (CAFE) standards to help wean the U.S. of its dependence on foreign oil. Because increasing the fuel efficiency of many vehicles increased their costs, light trucks were exempted from most standards as a way to assist farmers, ranchers, and contractors, who constituted the majority of light truck drivers. (At the time, only 16 percent of all new vehicles sold were considered “light trucks.”) Subsequently, standards were eventually included for light trucks, but they were far more lenient than those for passenger cars. The looser standards remain, despite the fact that far more light trucks can be seen in America’s suburbs and downtowns than on farms or ranches.

According to CAFE standards, by 1998, the average mile-per-gallon (mpg) requirement for the nation’s fleet of new autos was to be 27.5 for passenger cars, 20.7 for light trucks and no minimum for the largest SUV models. Light trucks are allowed to emit a third more carbon dioxide and more than double the amount of nitrogen oxide, unburned fuel, and soot particles per mile than passenger cars. All are exempt from the gas-guzzler tax—primarily levied on sports cars—and most full-size models are exempt from the luxury vehicle tax. The increased proportion of light trucks manufactured has lowered the average fuel economy for all new vehicles from a high of 26.2 mpg in 1987 to nearly 24 mpg in the late 1990s. The actual fuel efficiency of the entire fleet of light trucks in the U.S. is under 14 mpg, while cars come in close to 22 mpg.

In 1995, when the Clinton administration proposed an increase in fuel economy for light trucks, the plan was quickly shelved when America’s Big Three auto makers—producers of 86 percent of all light trucks and 100 percent of the largest models—and auto unions convinced Congress and the administration that any new standards would hand over the SUV market to the Japanese, who make more fuel-efficient light trucks. This fear-mongering echoed similar tactics 20 years previously when auto-industry lobbyists warned of the death of their industry, the loss of millions of jobs, and the collapse of the economy should the CAFE standards be imposed.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, light truck emissions represent the single fastest growing source of global warming gases. The agency estimates that light trucks will represent 34 percent of the total increase in energy-related carbon emissions from 1990 to 2010. Four-by-Fours burn far more gasoline than standard cars, creating large quantities of carbon dioxide (CO2), the main ingredient in global warming. According to John CeCicco of the American Council for Energy Efficient Economics in Washington D.C., CO2 emissions for all vehicles would have been reduced by 9.3 percent (and 600,000 barrels of oil saved) if light trucks were not exempted from CAFE standards and were purchased at the same rate as they were in 1975.

Despite the federal government’s refusal to raise pollution standards for light trucks and the continuing popularity of Four-by-Fours, there is still some hope. New regulations in California—frequently the harbinger for changes in the auto industry nationally—could make stricter regulations at the federal level more politically feasible. At the end of 1998, California regulators voted unanimously to require light trucks to meet the same strict emissions standards as passenger cars by 2004. As expected, the Big Three automakers said the timetable was “impossible” and could increase the price of some vehicles by $7,000, killing sales. Disputing this claim, regulators estimate that a $300 addition in labor and technology should take care of the problem. Predictably, the auto industry is again using fear-mongering to stall or eliminate any progressive changes in environmental or safety regulations. In the past they also fought against fuel efficiency regulations and air bag requirements, yet somehow, despite these new requirements, the industry always seems to be unimpaired and rarely loses any ground financially.

Philip Goff is an urban planner and environmentalist who lives in Portland, Oregon. In the next issue of Satya he will write on light trucks and worsening road safety.