As America celebrates its birthday this week with barbecues, fireworks and band concerts playing Sousa marches, it seems appropriate to take stock of our nation’s maturity. Are we grown up yet? Hardly.
One way we measure our children’s maturity is by their growing sense of responsibility to family, school and the community at large. The country’s sense of responsibility comes from Washington–to its citizens, its laws and institutions, and to the planet. Or maybe not.
The record on that score is mixed. Lawmakers are responsible to their constituents, but pandering for the sake of reelection isn’t quite the same thing as responsible leadership.
The Patients Bill of Rights, passed by the Senate Friday, had so many amendments tacked on it looked like a Christmas tree, or maybe just a hedge.
Voters want it, insurers don’t; lawmakers hoping to return to Capitol Hill in 2002 need to vote for it. The President says he wants to sign it but threatens a veto if it includes the right to sue HMOs (he loathes trial lawyers and his invitation to the dance doesn’t come up until 2004). Maturity may not be his long suit.
Vice-President Cheney is nothing if not mature, but his concern may be only as deep as his roots in the oil fields. Petroleum runs in his veins. Why else would he debunk conservation efforts when he has the stature to inspire responsibility?
Another way we measure children’s development is by the kinds of toys they favor. They progress from soft, cuddly animals to things with wheels–wagons and sleds to skates and bikes–from pushing and pulling to pedaling. Then suddenly, about the time their hormones kick in, everything has to have a motor and make a lot of noise, or be played on a video screen, also making a lot of noise. Dexterity gives way to decibels. Is this progress on the road to maturity? Probably not.
Big boys in this country, and some girls, are showing an inexplicable fondness for huge, noisy vehicles. I asked my daughter if her SUV had a hole in the muffler. She said, “Mom! It’s supposed to sound that way. It’s supposed to sound beefy.”
My Saturn is not in danger of sounding even slightly beefy, but it gets three times the miles per gallon, spews half as much pollution, is safer (unless it gets hit by Big Beefy), is reliable, comfortable and has never had tread separation. It’s my second (the first was sold to a friend at 100,000-plus miles for more than half what I paid). So why can’t General Motors power it with a fuel cell? Duh! No incentive. Why did Saturn announce at its 10th birthday that it would add, you guessed it, an SUV to the line? Duh! The profit incentive.
Bush and Cheney are pushing an energy policy that, they now say, includes $86 million in grants to encourage development of more efficient fuel technologies and actions to curb federal energy use. Say again, please. Taxpayers will pay the government to turn its lights down, to adjust the White House thermostat? How about modifying all those black limos to use less gas? How about some TV ads that portray conservation and recycling as sexy? Let’s hoist responsibility onto the nation’s radar screen.
Of course, the Really Big Energy Plan calls for major drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and just about every national park on the map. Fortunately, some mature, responsible members of Congress (from both parties) balked at despoiling the nation’s public lands, voting last week to ban oil and gas exploration off the Florida coast, in national monuments and under the Great Lakes. And drilling in Alaska’s wildlife refuge was pronounced DOA, even by many Republicans. Bravo!
Even Bush should be mature enough now to see that environmentalists are not just kooks and tree huggers. At least he can read the polls showing widespread concern about environmental effects of his energy plan. While the environmental movement in this country doesn’t rival its political clout in Europe, the Natural Resources Defense Council and others are taking the lead in combating the administration’s rhetoric about the energy crisis.
“By simply increasing average fuel efficiency on new cars, SUVs and light trucks from 24 to 39 miles per gallon over the next decade, we would save 51 billion barrels of oil,” NRDC says. “More than 15 times the likely yield from the Arctic.”
And requiring replacement tires to be as fuel-efficient as original tires on new vehicles (which have lower rolling resistance) would save 5.4 billion barrels over the next 50 years.
NRDC also is suing the EPA for missing a congressional deadline to impose new standards for arsenic in drinking water. These guys are mature adults. They’re not chaining themselves to logging tractors; they’re suing the government and winning. Bravo, encore.
Are we grown up yet? Some of us are. Happy birthday, America.
