Posted on 09/12/2005 9:26:20 AM PDT by doug from upland
Edited on 09/12/2005 9:35:07 AM PDT by Admin Moderator. [history]
FReepers, sometimes the other side just makes it so easy for us. My original report regarding the Sierra Club Summit is linked above.
After giving a stirring speech on saving the planet, Arianna Huffington walked right past me outside. A friend was able to take this photo of her Chevrolet Suburban waiting for her across the street. She parked across the street rather than being dropped off next to the hyrbrid vehicles that were showcased in front of the Sierra Club Summit. She didn't dare get dropped off in front of her environmentalist pals at the Moscone Center building where she was speaking.
I watched Arianna and her driver get into the vehicle and take off together. No entourage. Just the driver in front and Arianna in the back. I quickly borrowed a camera and took some more pictures from a distance of her in the car, but I don't know if they will be able to show her as recognizable. Those pictures should be in my hands later today or tomorrow. Although I yelled for her to wave to me, she didn't play for the camera.
Way to go, Arianna. Your husband outed himself after the California Senate race. In broad daylight you now outed yourself as an incredible foolish hypocrite. And at the Sierra Club Summit no less. Just FReeping amazing.
(Thanks to blurblogger for sizing and creating the hosting link.)
Oh, I know. The Suburban was going somewhere anyway. Right, Arianna?
Your original report gave me a much needed laugh last night. Thank you for your "on the scene" reporting.
She's just an oppurtunistic person trying to make a
buck in the U.S. surfeit of commentators...she needs
a "hook" and she's pretending she a liberal clear
thinker...when her "husband" was running for office,
she was a goody two shoes republican...She is a manufactured ideological empty talking head...who
spouts off prefrabicated "talking points". About as
useful as a teletype machine...
Kiss her off.
Geez, that thing makes my SUV look like a mini cooper.
Almost looks like a short bus.
Nah, just be sure you always drive with a 40 knot tailwind.
Driving is so lower class. Let the chauffeur do it.
"Can anyone identify the year and model?"
Looks like my '99 if it were washed. I get 14 city and 15 hwy in it, one mpg better than my gas guzzling H2.
"...or the Kennedy's and Streisands not wanting Wind-Farms near their property. Such hypocrites."
Or John Kerry giving a speech during the presidential campaign on the environment, then climbing into a Suburban to go to the next event, where he gave the exact same speech. I think we could go on and on, couldn't we?
That's a 95-01 Suburban (or Yukon XL, depending on the year). It is a 4WD version (as evidenced by the wheels, the 2WD version had straight spokes). It gets around 8-10mpg in the city, and not much more than that on the highway. It has, most likely, a 5.4 or 5.7liter V-8, though it could have a 7.4 liter, in which case drop the mileage even more (6-8 city, 10-11 hwy).
That's great. Thanks for the info.
Typical Leftist hypocrite. The news is?
The do as I say not as do crowd.
The "do as I say, not as I do", crowd.
Send Huffie this picture and ask her why she is riding in an SUV to support the terrorists.
Right on the mark.
The coming SUV wars
Is the tide of public opinion turning against these metal monstrosities?
By Arianna Huffington
Nov. 25, 2002 | Once again, America is a nation divided.
I'm not talking about the irreparable, brother-against-brother split between those who think the Bachelor should have proposed to Brooke instead of Helene. I'm talking about a contentious clash that is just beginning to rage. Call it the SUV war. As you read this, the opposing camps are staking out their turf.
On one side sales of the gas-guzzling, pollution-spewing, downright dangerous behemoths continue to soar. And apparently, the more fuel-inefficient the better: Dealers are having a hard time keeping up with the demand for the Hummer H2, GM's new $50,000 barely domesticated spinoff of the Gulf War darling, which struggles to cover 10 miles for every gallon of gas it burns. The symbolism of these impractical machines' military roots is too delicious to ignore. We go to war to protect our supply of cheap oil in vehicles that would be prohibitively expensive to operate without it.
There seems to be no shortage of Americans who think that consuming 25 percent of the world's oil just isn't enough. Maybe the next model, the H3, will need to be connected to an intravenous gas-pump hose all the time. And there would still be people eager to buy it.
These are the same folks who don't give a whit (this being a family newspaper) that at an OPEC meeting last month, the oily group's secretary general announced that one of the few bright spots in an otherwise gloomy world was the U.S.'s seemingly unslakable thirst for its product. How nice it must feel for SUV owners, knowing that their swaggering imprudence is helping the world's anti-democratic oil sheiks sleep just a little better at night. Call this camp the Bigger Is Better crowd. Their motto: "Burn, baby, burn ... 30 percent more carbon monoxide and hydrocarbons and 75 percent more nitrogen oxides than passenger cars." How about this for a bumper sticker: "Honk if you hate the ozone layer!"
Lining up on the other side of the SUV DMZ are a disparate collection of groups and individuals whose aim is to win the hearts and minds -- and change the driving habits -- of the American public.
These include the Evangelical Environmental Network, which is promoting greater fuel efficiency through a provocative TV ad campaign that asks: "What would Jesus drive?" Hint: I don't think the answer is a Hummer. (Turning water into oil wasn't really his thing.) This comes at the same time that Americans for Fuel Efficient Cars, a group I co-founded with film producer Lawrence Bender, environmental activist Laurie David, and movie and TV agent Ari Emanuel, is producing ads parodying the drugs-equal-terror ads the administration is running. In this case, we're linking driving SUVs to our national security. When Hollywood progressives and the "WWJD?" crowd independently hit on the same idea, you know that something is up.
Even as SUVs continue to roll off the assembly line and out of car dealers' showrooms at a record pace, there is a growing sense that the tide of public opinion is turning against these metal monstrosities. A tipping point in the push to wean ourselves from foreign oil has finally been reached. The SUV makers have won a few battles, but they may be about to lose the war.
The new mood is very similar to the consciousness-raising that followed the efforts of Mothers Against Drunk Driving and the Designated Driver campaign. Before that, the prevailing attitude was, "Hey, what's the big deal?" The campaign hammered home a very compelling answer to that question, and the public's perception of drinking and driving was changed forever. Getting loaded and getting behind the wheel went from being cool to being antisocial. With luck, getting behind the wheel of a loaded gas-guzzler is about to undergo the same transformation.
To see how the SUV fight is going, take a look at the media, usually an excellent weather vane when it comes to these kinds of societal shifts. In the last week alone there has been an explosion in the amount of positive coverage given to the anti-SUV movement, including segments on all the networks' nightly news shows. This is no small thing when you consider the megamillions in advertising dollars the auto industry represents.
And in Washington, after steadfastly opposing any raise in fuel efficiency standards, the Bush administration let it be known last week that it is considering a proposal to increase the standard for light trucks and SUVs by 1.5 miles per gallon by 2007.
While Team Bush hailed the proposed boost as a major victory in the battle for energy independence, Sen. John Kerry, who along with Sen. John McCain last spring proposed raising the SUV standard by 50 percent, called the 7 percent increase "window dressing." Others labeled it "political theater" and "almost an insult in its modesty." A thousand dittos.
It does seem woefully inadequate -- especially when you consider how many loopholes have already been driven through by light trucks and SUVs, which are currently allowed to average 7 miles per gallon less than regular cars. And the ultimate absurdity is that if an SUV is massive enough, it is entirely exempt from federal fuel economy standards. That's right, build one with a gross vehicle weight of over 8,500 pounds -- like the Ford Excursion or the new Hummer -- and the leviathan's lousy gas mileage doesn't even have to be reported to the government.
Chew on that one and see if it doesn't rev your engine: Automakers are rewarded for being particularly inefficient. There's the Bush Free Market for you.
Even the muckety-mucks in Detroit are starting to get the message. Ford, for instance, whose executives met last week with representatives from the "What Would Jesus Drive?" campaign, has pledged to boost the overall fuel efficiency of its SUVs by 25 percent over the next three years, and plans to introduce a hybrid gas-electric model that will get around 40 mpg.
Of course, much of the industry's "we care" message is little more than a desperate attempt to forestall the inevitable and put a pretty P.R. bow on a very ugly reality. Their real message is: "We care about making money, and if doing that now means we have to make it seem like we care about the environment, then so be it." Take, for example, this "faux" socially conscious reminder offered in the new Hummer brochure: "With the power to cross any terrain comes the responsibility to protect that terrain and its potentially fragile ecosystems."
The war's not going the SUV makers' way, and they know it. So now they want to make it look like we're all on the same side. At the moment, they're trying to figure out just how far they have to go to quell the uprising. It's in all of our interests to let them know that a 1.5 mpg improvement is not enough. The consequences of our addiction to foreign oil are no longer an abstraction.
Is that a light saber sticking out of the driver's side window?
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