Throw the SUVs overboard!

Americans have long been aware of, and chosen to ignore, the environmental consequences of our excessive consumption of oil. But the situation has changed. Those who rejected the call for conservation because it frequently came from whining tree-huggers now understand that this isn't about saving trees, it's about America's security. To cut back on domestic energy consumption is not to lie down in front of the bulldozers -- it is an aggressive tactic with a precise goal.

In the past, certainly, we have been very vehement about security -- and independence, autonomy, democracy and the aforementioned American way of life. In fact, when these hard-won luxuries were threatened during World War II, Americans were asked to make extraordinary sacrifices -- and they did, responding to what President Franklin D. Roosevelt referred to as "the privilege of making whatever self-denial is necessary." Gasoline, shoes, meat were rationed. Americans raised their own vegetables, bought war bonds. Women took jobs in factories.

In America's recent wars, civilians have not been asked to practice much self-denial. Demands on the home front have been few, and they have lacked specificity. Ribbons on our trees, the names of MIAs and POWs on our wrists -- there have been gestures and requests for "support," but nothing with the galvanizing effect of cutting back on butter, gas and silk stockings to provide working parts for the machine of war.

Had Bush's speech been delivered in peacetime, there would have been much to admire in it. Of course it is a good thing to volunteer in a hospital, to become active in the USO, to comfort the afflicted. And it never hurts to be reminded about the value of community and the Golden Rule. But, as Dick Cheney might say, these are signs of personal virtue. Americans are prepared to do more right now. We are prepared to make sacrifices -- particularly if the effects of our personal choices are felt by our enemies, and enjoyed by our children.

As it happens, the sacrifices essential to the current war effort are few. They have nothing to do with butter, and everything to do with gas.

In a recent Newsweek article, veteran science writer Sharon Begley pointed out that 68 percent of the oil that America consumes goes to a single use -- transportation. And so, she reasoned, to be independent of Saudi crude, Americans need not spread themselves thin, finding new ways to heat and cool their homes, power their myraid gadgets or fuel essential factories. All we need to do is to find a way to conserve oil, make cars go further on less gas and build engines that run on alternative fuels.

The impact of an effective war effort on individual Americans would be marginal. Other than to show some restraint in driving and some increased interest in carpooling, Americans could extend oil supplies significantly if they bought fuel-efficient cars and kept them tuned. (Both efforts combined, according to the Alliance to Save Energy, could save 31 million barrels of gasoline a year, and 1 million barrels of oil a day.) Beyond these moves, the burden shifts to American automakers to make the sacrifices necessary to move faster in increasing the fuel efficiency of vehicles (increasing fuel economy by a single mile per gallon saves 300,000 barrels of oil daily, reports Begley); produce a wider fleet of hybrid cars (which run on gas and electricity); and speed up the production of fuel-cell cars, which run on hydrogen derived from water.

A Newsweek poll that accompanied Begley's article indicated that 73 percent of Americans would pay more for a fuel-efficient car; 42 percent said it was "very important" for oil independence that SUV owners switch to more fuel-efficient vehicles. While this doesn't prove that a war effort organized around energy conservation would be a hit across the country, there is certainly evidence in the numbers that kicking the gasoline habit might be something that Americans, regardless of what energy industry folk might think of their abilities, are capable of.

Look at the recent conservation coup in California, where motivated citizens defied naysayers, chief among them Dick Cheney, and conserved energy so effectively in the face of rolling energy blackouts that they now have a surplus. They were responding, in large part, to the threat of higher bills, an ambitious advertising campaign and incentives that brought 20 percent discounts to those who used 20 percent less power. (More than a third of eligible ratepayers qualified for the break.) Imagine what the response would be nationwide if the motivation for conservation was not the threat of blackouts, but the country's future independence from foreign oil and the geopolitical nightmare, replete with threats of terrorism, that comes with it.

At its heart, the campaign to conserve is, like all war efforts, about patriotism. Even in a country where the prospect of war, uniquely justified by an attack on American soil, is not easily or universally accepted, this response to terror has the potential to unify. It is a proposal that works without a threat to basic rights, except perhaps for the right to consume a finite natural resource because it's there. By conserving energy, we preserve freedom, a commodity that is not opposed in this country, no matter how diverse the beliefs of its citizens. In fact, the only opposition to the plan is likely to come from those who profit from our dependence on oil -- foreign or Alaskan -- and who count on our mistaken belief that there is nothing to be done about it.

If George W. Bush were to launch a decisive homeland conservation plan over the objections of his friends in the energy industry, it would be a defining moment in his presidency -- one that would boost his credibility at home and abroad, and ensure a distinctive legacy. His difficult decisions so far in this crisis -- to bomb Afghanistan, to order troops into war -- did not take much political courage given the public's mood for revenge. By initiating an immediate domestic attack on foreign oil dependence -- specifically one that did not seek to enrich the energy industry, or coddle automakers or deplete natural resources -- Bush would demonstrate a capacity for bravery that would command respect, now, and perhaps more importantly, later, as the U.S. moves beyond its dangerous dependence on Middle Eastern oil into an era of safety and self-reliance.

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