For now, though, I’d rather discuss the Clean Energy and Security Act, otherwise known as the Waxman-Markey bill after its leading Congressional sponsors, that was passed in the US House of Representatives yesterday by a narrow 219-212 vote. This is the legislation that would move the US towards a “cap and trade” approach to regulating greenhouse-gas emissions. One key to understanding the push for such a law is clearly the issue’s whole international aspect: the rest of the world rather expects the United States to embark on something of this sort, whether it is Europe that already is further ahead in its environmental legislation or it is China and India who are definitely behind, but looking on to see whether there will ultimately be American inaction that can justify their own.

That’s why it is good to see an article in the authoritative French newspaper Le Monde such as the one just written by Corine Lesnes. Obama launches his green revolution, she proclaims in the piece’s very title, which features at the top an oddly hagiographic photo of Obama standing in front of what seems to be an early-American wilderness mural, perhaps during a visit to the Department of the Interior.

In fact, both that title and illustration, in their implicit optimism, are somewhat at odds with the general tenor of the full article, which rather emphasizes the tenuousness of the legislative victory – as in that 219-212 vote – and the uncertain prospects going forward. Many quotes are provided from the bill’s opponents, which include not only Republicans (e.g. Frank Lucas of Oklahoma: “This legislation will destroy our way of life!”) but also Democrats (including black Congressman Artur Davis from Alabama – Lesnes misspells his first name, which happens to be the very first word in the body of her piece – who even attended Harvard Law School with Obama: “The system of a market for CO2 emissions penalises industrial regions. Alabama will lose jobs.”). House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, in order to make sure the bill could be brought up for a vote before everyone left for the 4th of July recess, had to take what sounds like the extreme measure of limiting debate to only one allotted minute per speaker. Naturally, that sort of thing is impossible under Senate procedures, and indeed there is by no means any guarantee that the bill will pass there as well to actually become law.

But Lesnes is also willing to look on the bright side. As she points out, anything like this was quite impossible only a year ago, under the Bush Administration, with its well-known attitudes towards climate change generally, and was even hard to imagine just six months ago, when according to Lesnes few Americans had yet heard of the concept of “cap and trade.” And again, the House passage did save the president from considerable embarrassment. For one thing, you might recall that German Bundeskanzlerin Angela Merkel happened to be in town visiting the President; yes, she was flying back to Germany by the time the vote was actually taken, but still, it’s easy to imagine how talks with President Obama would have been rather strained if it had been apparent beforehand that Waxman-Markey was likely to go down to defeat. Plus, remember that Obama is once more scheduled to head the other way in about two weeks’ time to meet Merkel and the rest of the G8 heads of government in Italy, not to mention Pope Benedict XVI as well, who presumably is interested in what kind of steward of God’s earthly creation the American president intends his country and its economy to be. It’s clearly better to travel off to these encounters with that “cap and trade” bill still alive in the legislative process – and that Congressional recess happening next week probably means that the US Senate will not have the opportunity (at least quite yet) to destroy the happy façade Obama will be able to present that “cap and trade” is well on its way in the USA.

                          

At least these papers definitely provide an alternative take on happenings in the public sphere, both national and international. For instance, the dilemma the Nederlands Dagblad finds itself in with its coverage of the “Pray at the Pump” movement in America (Supplicants see lower gas prices as answered prayers) is particularly delicious. At bottom, you realize that they must be sympathetic to folks like Rock Twyman, discussed in the article, who is so confident in the power of mass public prayer that he began “Pray at the Pump” last April to get Christians to assemble at gas stations all over the U.S. of A. to join hands and pray aloud for lower prices. And what do you know: gas prices have recently headed downwards. “There is no one else for us to turn to than God,” Twyman is glad to tell journalists. That flaming secularist, Jay Leno (not called such in this article: that’s my own ironic characterization) had the gall to pick out Twyman’s movement as the butt of jokes, but not only has the latter been proved right, he also has shown himself willing to include Leno in his prayers at his home-base Shell station in Northwest Washington, DC.

On the other hand: Perhaps the very idea of praying to lower prices is absurd on its face, regardless of whether subsequent developments seem to justify it or not. Indeed, whoever is the Nederlands Dagblad writer here (the attribution is only to the paper’s “church editor”), s/he is willing to raise some pointed questions. Perhaps some people pray the opposite way, i.e. for higher gas prices, for the sake of the environment: which way would God rule on this one? And if you want to pray, aren’t there rather more-deserving causes to pray for, like for the hungry, the war refugees, etc.?

Then sometimes these Dutch evangelical publications really amaze with the sensitivity of their antennae to obscure doings by their American counterparts. How about the medical journal Archives of Surgery, for example? Ordinarily this sort of journal publishes articles with sexy titles like Evaluating the Degree of Difficulty of Laparoscopic Colorectal Surgery, but the Reformatorisch Dagblad somehow recently picked up something in its pages rather out of the ordinary (Americans trust God more than the doctor). This has to do with the recently publication in Archives of Surgery of an article, Trauma Death, that reveals that 57.4% of people (and even 19.5% of medical professionals) “believe that divine intervention could save a person when physicians believe treatment is futile.” Again, it probably took an explictly Christian newspaper like this one to be looking for news like this in the first place, but it’s also true that it’s this sort of publication where you can usually detect between the lines something of an approving attitude towards attitudes and behaviors that many others (certainly most Europeans) would find rather bewildering.

UPDATE:Whoops, here’s another one – that is, a Christian-oriented national newspaper – but it’s Danish: Kristeligt Dagblad, or “Christian Daily.” Let’s see if I can remind myself to check whether it, too, goes off-line on the Sabbath. Anyway, I’ve got it covered for you.

                          

Of course, that is not welcome news to many. This includes many Germans, who come from a culture that does appreciate well-engineered motor vehicles, together with their unfettered use. Think of those renowned no-speed-limit Autobahnen. And since when were Germans ever known for their mass use of bicycles, as the Dutch and the Danish – and Chinese, etc. – are known for to this day?

No, through recent history the pride of Germany has been their excellent armored fighting vehicles, and then – once the sheer catastrophe of the Second World War turned them away from things military – their exquisite autos: Mercedes, BMW, Porsche, even Volkswagen. The last few decades, though, they have also taken up the cause of environmentalism in a big way – Germany is the country where you’re asked to sort your street-side trash by Glass/Paper/Packaging/Other, for example – and this has of course at times worked at cross-purposes with their automobile love-affair.

For them, America (for all its other connotations) has been the earthly paradise where one could indulge in one’s car fantasies unimpeded by rules or the authorities (if you ignore the highway speed limits – and, of course, many Americans do). Thus it is only natural that the Frankfurter Rundschau dispatched their man Dietmar Ostermann to report on the demise of the Hummer from “Hummer City”: South Bend, Indiana, where there apparently is/was a Hummer plant, and where there definitely still exists a special training course for instructing Hummer owners how to get the most out of their Monsters. (The title of Ostermann’s article – Das große Hummersterben – translates as “The Great Hummer Die-Out,” except that Hummer in German also means “lobster,” so it’s a pun: “The Great Lobster Die-Out.” Clever, eh?)

Now, Ostermann does get off on the wrong foot, in that his article’s lede mentions “a test-track in Illinois,” and just afterwards he speaks of “South Bend in the US state Illinois,” whereas I can’t find “South Bend, Illinois” anywhere on the Net and, anyway, everyone knows that it is South Bend, Indiana. On the other hand, he definitely knows a little something about going to the Source to get your story: the article begins with him being driven over a ferocious route of gullies, low walls, 60º-grade ditches, etc. that is the Hummer training course just outside of South Bend by Chris Deak, chief instructor. This is not an experience you get automatically just by buying a Hummer (even as the cheapest model, the H2, was recently priced at $64,000 a piece). No, this four-day training session – accommodation and meals included – requires an additional $5,200, travel to South Bend – and, presumably, some intention actually to drive your Hummer out in the wild, eventually, the utter lack of which truly constituting the dirty little not-so-secret among most SUV owners.

The Hummer: Cultural War-Chariot

Ah yes – the Sports Utility Vehicle! Truly an emblem for American culture of the 1990s when, as Ostermann writes, that “nation swelled with self-assurance. Autos became ever-bigger; gas was cheap.” Back then, the very first civilian Hummer (adapted, of course, from the “Humvee” all-terrain vehicles in the service of the US military) was the H1, and it cost $146,000. Let’s not forget who grabbed the first one off the assembly line back in 1992: it was none other than the Terminator, then-actor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who therewith started building quite a pesonal collection of the things. In his wake followed as customers – as GM PR man Lee Woodward explains to Ostermann – mainly “Hollywood bling-bling types”: rappers, other actors, and entrepreneurs who wanted a very graphic way to show the rest of the world that they had “made it.”

All the while, these automotive monsters with their 300-horsepower engines achieved gas mileage that often went as low as one liter per kilometer. (That is metric Euro-speak, of course; it translates to roughly 2.5 miles per gallon.) And now times have changed: in 2008 gas prices have ascended to about $4.11/gallon on average. (That’s still only about 70 eurocents per liter! Ostermann exclaims – actually it’s a little less than that – which is less than half what you pay over here in the NL and Germany, but still, Americans are sitting up and taking notice in a big way.) And current California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger doesn’t have much to do these days – at least publicly – with any of his fleet of Hummers anymore.

Take Your Prius – Or Your Skateboard

Now what is hot in American automotive land is the Toyota Prius, the famous gasoline-electric motor hybrid. Hummer dealers can’t unload their stock with even the most generous rebates, while customers for Priuses (“Prii”?) seem perfectly willing to wait three to four months for them. Among the ranks of proud Prius owners is Stephen Luecke (ah, a name which Ostermann’s readership would definitely find easy to pronounce!), who happens to be mayor of “Hummer City” South Bend, Indiana. His administration has put out big colorful banners in the City Hall exhorting city employees to get to work by carpool, by foot, by bicycle – even by skateboard! (OK then, what about by Segway?)

Adam Rogers, a Hummer dealer in the near-by city of Niles (and Ostermann does not mention that this is in Michigan), is confident, however, that “Americans will always love big cars.” He’s sure that gas prices will return back to somewhere near their former levels, and that customers will then start flocking back. On the other hand, our old friend Chris Deak, who gives Ostermann his adventure-ride at the beginning of the article, heaves a sigh of relief that he got out just in time. He bought himself his own Hummer four years ago and for a while had a blast riding in it with his friends all over town. But two years ago gas prices already started to edge upward, and he made the tough decision to sell it. “It’s not really the most economical auto in the world,” the Hummer trainer admits.

Ya think? Let me add in closing this other apt quotation that Ostermann extracted for his article from another South Bend auto dealer (not in Hummers, but Toyotas – including Toyota SUVs): “We Americans have the strong tendency to want things that we really don’t need.”

(Whoops, one more thing: Guess what the German equivalent of “Joe Sixpack” is? Looks like it’s Otto-Normalbürger: “Otto Normal-Citizen”! Isn’t that wild?)