Why is America behind everyone else? (one more example)

America's cars and pickup trucks represent only 30% of the world's fleet, but the spew out almost 50% of the world's greenhouse gases:

American cars and pickup trucks are responsible for nearly half of the greenhouse gases emitted by automobiles globally, even though the nation's vehicles make up just 30% of the nearly 700 million cars in use, according to a new report by Environmental Defense.

Cars in the U.S. are driven more miles, face lower fuel economy standards and use fuel with more carbon than many of those driven in other countries, the authors found. According to the report by the environmental group, due out today, U.S. cars and light trucks were driven 2.6 trillion miles in 2004, equal to driving back and forth to Pluto more than 470 times.

So, are we going to get tighter fuel economy standards? Don't count on it. Take a look at this press release from the U.S. Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works claiming that experts believe global warming is due to natural causes. Most of the supposed experts here are hacks and have not even published their findings in refereed academic journals. As Al Gore states in his movie An Inconvenient Truth, a recent study in Science by Naomi Oreskes that surveyed a sample of 928 refereed journal articles on the subject found that none (nada, zippo, zero) concluded that global warming was due to natural causes alone. There is no serious debate on the question of whether human beings are creating climate change.