Editorial: Better mileage is critical

Thursday, May 4, 2006 | 7:31 a.m.

President Bush has the authority to set mileage requirements for SUVs, pickups and vans and he used this power in March as a follow-up to his "America is addicted to oil" remark in his State of the Union address.

Bush's new requirements were an improvement, but just barely. California and nine other states are now fighting in federal court his lackluster action, arguing that global warming and rising gasoline prices cry out for a much more ambitious effort.

The largest of the SUVs, such as the Hummer H2 and Chevrolet Suburban, became subject to stricter mileage requirements under Bush's announcement. In the past, because of their enormous weight, they had been included in the working-truck class of vehicles and therefore exempted from the stricter fuel requirements applied to regular SUVs and pickup trucks .

The other improvement announced by Bush was that SUVs, pickup trucks and vans together would have to average 24 miles per gallon by 2011, rather than the current 21.6 mpg - an improvement of about 11 percent.

Critics were harsh at the time of Bush's announcement.

"After the Bush administration acknowledged our oil addiction, one might have expected a slam dunk, but this is an air ball," David Friedman of the Union of Concerned Scientists told the Associated Press.

Such critics had a much better standard to support, one already adopted by California. Federal requirements for fuel efficiency were authorized under the Clean Air Act, passed in 1970. Because California, however, had already passed a state law regulating fuel efficiency to combat smog, the state was allowed to maintain its own standard apart from the federal standard.

The new standards set by California require all models of automobiles sold in the state to achieve a 40 percent increase in fuel efficiency by 2016, a much stricter standard than what Bush proposed for pickup trucks, vans and SUVs. And Congress, which controls the fuel-efficiency standards for passenger cars, hasn't changed the 27.5 mpg requirement in more than 20 years.

States have the option of either adopting California's standard or the federal standard. According to a November story in The New York Times, New York, Maine, Connecticut, New Jersey, Vermont, Massachusetts, Oregon, Washington, Rhode Island and Pennsylvania have already adopted California's standard or are about to.

Now, with California in the lead, most of those states, and New York City and the District of Columbia, are joining in a lawsuit to overturn Bush's new rule on SUVs, pickup trucks and vans and replace it with one more in line with California's.

We are glad to see this activism by the states and hope that more join in the fight against air pollution and foreign oil dependency. It is time for a sea change in the way American autos are manufactured.