Words and posters
"I am an American fighting in the forces which guard my country and our way of life. I am prepared to give my life in their defence" - that is the role of a soldier, according to the US Armed Forces Code of Conduct. Evidently, the Bush administration believes part of "our way of life" is the right to wastefully gobble down a ridiculous share of the world's energy resources. With less than 5 per cent of the world's population, the US consumes more than 25 per cent of the world's oil and is its largest producer of greenhouse gases. The administration appears dead set against controls on oil consumption and pollution. Choking the planet's air is also part of George W Bush's vision of America's "way of life".
The biggest factor in America's high consumption of oil is our lack of substantial public transport and the resultant dependence on the personal automotive. Most wasteful among these is the Sport Utility Vehicle (SUV). In the 1980s, SUVs represented only 2 per cent of new vehicles sales. Luckily for the American car industry, the televised 1991 war against Iraq introduced US civilians to the macho capabilities of the Humvee off-road vehicle and its stylish civilian siblings. In 2002, as we prepared for another off-road adventure to secure our oil supply, SUV sales reached a record 2.8 million, accounting for 25 per cent of new vehicle sales. Less than 5 per cent of SUVs are ever driven off-road. Instead, behemoths lurch through city streets - in some cases at a shameful 3.7 miles per gallon.
War gave America the SUV. Now war may take it away again. Bush's failure to seize and easily exploit Iraq's oilfields has driven pump prices up, far from the downward trend extolled as a benefit of its proposed war. The cost has been felt by the consumer. The rise of the SUV has tapered off. After a decade and a half of tremendous growth, total SUV sales were down 10.2 per cent in the first quarter of 2005. In April, the biggest class of SUVs dropped 21.7 per cent from the same month in 2004.
In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, media speculation about the uncertain impact on the energy industry sparked a wave of panic buying and profiteering by refiners and their crude oil suppliers. US gas prices now surpass historical highs set during the Opec oil embargo. Bush's war, combined with his poor energy planning and his lackadaisical approach to government regulation of profiteers, has had the inadvertent result of turning gas-guzzling American consumers away from SUVs and towards gas-sipping alternatives. Has a tipping point been reached? Are US consumers permanently turning away from energy waste and gluttony? It's far too early to tell, but it would be a twisted bit of schadenfreude if former oilman Bush's failings as a politician put his close friends in the Saudi royal family out of business.
Micah Wright's two books of posters, You Back the Attack . . . We'll Bomb Who We Want! and If You're Not a Terrorist Then Stop Asking Questions, are available online and at bookshops. View 400 of his posters now at www.antiwarposters.com
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