Gas Guzzler Campaign Educates Against Car Pollution

FACT is promoting the national Gas Guzzler Campaign in its educational drive to alter public attitudes toward the automobile.

The campaign discourages the use of fuel-inefficient cars, vans and light trucks, as well as energy-wasting driving practices. Major goal: to fight increasing environmental, public health and economy impacts caused by excessive gas consumption.

Other goals:

• to build public support for alternatives to fuel-inefficient driving such as mass transit, bicycles and car-pooling;
• to encourage more fuel-efficient driving behavior;
• to support less polluting energy sources electric and solar-powered vehicles.

GAS GUZZLER DEFINED

A Gas Guzzler is a new motor vehicle that does not balance environmental and health impacts of fossil fuel for safe, reliable transportation. Guzzlers often use innovative technologies to make vehicles faster instead of more fuel-efficient.

For instance: power options and four-wheel drive increase the adverse environmental impact of a motor vehicle by detracting from its fuel economy. Adverse effects of cars include:

• Transportation accounts for one-third of the U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, over 60% of which is from cars and light trucks. Each extra gallon of gas burned by an inefficient car adds 19.7 pounds of CO2 to the atmosphere. CO2 global warning may increase crop failure, coastal flooding, severe storm damage, destruction of ecosystems and population dislocation.
• Gas Guzzlers needlessly increase our trade deficit and dependence on oil imports. Today oil imports account for nearly two-thirds of the U.S. total trade deficit over 40% of the oil used daily in the U.S. Also, oil dependence increases pressures to drill in environmentally sensitive areas such as the Arctic National wildlife Refuge and Outer Continental Shelf. (And off Florida's coast.)
• Gas Guzzlers hurt U.S. competitiveness by missing a clear international trend towards fuel-efficient vehicles that reduce greenhouse gas emissions. At the U.N. Earth Summit, Japan and the European Community committed to cut back CO2 emissions shortly after the turn of the century, but the U.S. opposed the idea.
• Gas Guzzlers cost consumers more. Inefficient cars with bigger engines cost more to build and are often loaded with fuel-inefficient 'option packages'. These extras raise the consumer price tag and cause poor fuel economy.