20 July 2007
With the sun going down on Brandywine Street and the lawn sprinklers hissing gently in the background, worried groups of neighbours are talking quietly about a shocking act of domestic terrorism that has occurred on their doorsteps.
They chat on the porches of their clapboard colonial-style houses in the dappled early evening light. Some have just returned from the nearby Whole Foods organic store and one worried-looking family pulls up in a Prius. Children pour out carrying musical instruments after attending their lesson.
The scene may appear as a Norman Rockwell work, but Brandywine Street in a suburb of Washington DC is now on the frontline of America's fractious debate about climate change.
Early on Monday morning, two masked men arrived there wielding baseball bats and a machete. They then set about attacking the enormous Hummer that had been parked there for not even a week. As the owner, Gareth Groves, slept, they smashed every window, battered the panels, slashed the oversized tires and scrawled "for the environ" on the side of the seven-foot-high behemoth.
The attackers caused about $12,000 (£6,000) worth of damage before running into the night. As an act of eco-vandalism, it was not as spectacular as previous episodes in the US. A couple of years ago three environmental activists firebombed several Hummer and 4x4 dealerships in California. One of them is now serving an eight-year jail term in a federal prison and two others are on the run from the FBI.
The argument over Hummers and vehicles like them go all the way to the White House. For the past 20 years car manufacturers have successfully blocked attempts to force them to become more efficient.
Curiously, while opinion polls reveal that given an option, three-quarters of Americans want dramatic increases in fuel efficient cars, they prefer to buy gas-guzzling Hummers, Cadillacs and behemoth-sized pickup trucks instead. Thirty years ago "light trucks", as 4x4 vehicles are classified, were only a fifth of all sales. Today they account for more than half. And in June, according to the latest figures from General Motors, the world's largest car manufacturer, Hummer sales were up by 11 per cent.
As the New Yorker magazine put it: "We buy gas guzzlers, but we vote for gas sipping."
Americans who think little of getting into a three-ton 4x4 for a run to the supermarket, also want Congress and the White House to clamp down on their sale. But with the lobbying strength of the US car industry, that seems unlikely to happen.
Last month, the Senate passed an energy bill that for the first time in nearly 20 years would have forced an improvement in the fuel efficiency of cars and 4x4s. But it became dead in the water because of the intervention of the Michigan Congressman John Dingell, who could fairly be described as friendly to the car lobby. He wanted fuel economy improvements that were condemned as being even weaker than the toothless measures proposed by President George Bush.
Now given how fractious the debate has become, over Hummers on suburban roads and the fuel efficiency of American cars, it is unclear whether any fuel requirements will make it into the bill before Congress, or even when the House will get around to debating it.
The attack on the Brandywine Hummer has triggered an outpouring of rage across the country - on both sides of the divide - and the vehicle has become the latest poster boy for America's failing attempts to grapple meaningfully with climate change.
Gareth Groves, the mystified 32-year-old owner of the smashed-up vehicle, is not enjoying his 15 minutes of fame. Sitting with his girlfriend and a US Army buddy on the front porch of his mother's house, he is unapologetic about his choice of car and more than shocked at the reaction of his neighbours to his misfortune.
Some have glared at him; others have passed with a look of smug satisfaction. "One in five people who come by have that 'you-got-what-you-deserve' look," said his army friend Andy Sexton, 27, who is on leave from fighting in Afghanistan.
Lucille, who witnessed the attack and called the police, was equally unsympathetic. "The neighbourhood in general is very concerned with the environment," said the Prius-driving neighbour. "It's ridiculous to be driving a Hummer."
Nowhere is the division over America's attitude to climate change more apparent than on Brandywine. Most of Mr Groves's neighbours disliked having the Hummer parked on their street. But they say they are equally shocked by the violence and feel that to condone it amounts to supporting terrorism. The authorities agree on that point at least and an FBI agent was quickly on the scene to interview the owner and neighbours.
The attack brought nationwide television networks and radio stations to their door and for a while camera crews were staking out the elegant home of Phyllis Groves, 70, the car owner's mother. She feels sorry for her son who only bought the car to promote his budding business as an agent for professional football players on the Washington Redskins team.
As liberal as everyone else on her street, she detests George Bush, hates the war in Iraq and works as an administrator at Georgetown University. "The Hummer was his dream, it's a man thing," she explained.
And to judge by the phone calls and emails he has been getting, the country is evenly divided between those who despise him and those who believe it is his God-given right to drive whatever he wants. "I'm sorry to hear about the violence, but Hummers are just horrific and selfish indulgences and should be banned from the road," said one.
"I am not advocate for Hummers, they're ridiculous vehicles to have, especially in a city, but this act is a form of terrorism by fringe extremists," said another. "I hope these thugs get caught and punished to the fullest extent of the law. No one deserves property destruction in the name of political activism," complained another.
For the moment Mr Groves is holding his nerve. He has had the car towed away to be repaired, but he is worried about bringing it back on his mother's street. "We have a garage out back," she explains, "but it was built with this house 80 years ago when cars were much smaller. I don't know what we're going to do."
The neighbours are not exactly coming around to sympathise. One woman, "a crackpot" says Mr Groves, kept walking back and forth telling anyone who would listen that she thought it was a good thing that the car had been vandalised. Another revealed that she has a T-shirt with a photograph of a Hummer with the word "Bummer" above it.
Police say that while there are occasional acts of vandalism in the area, which is close to a university, they have never before encountered an act of environmental activism with such a clear political message.
What will happen to the activists if and when the man from the FBI catches up with them, gives Mr Groves and his army friend something to smile inwardly about. "People tell me that an act of eco-terrorism is considered to be a class-A felony punishable by 20 years in jail and a $100,000 fine," he said. "That's why the FBI man was here."
That was the tragic fate of William "Billy" Cottrell, who was such an exceptional student at the University of Chicago that his professors considered him to be a physics genius, if an eccentric one. Two years after graduating with a "double major" in physics and mathematics, Cottrell, who has Asperger's syndrome, was charged and convicted as one of America's first eco-terrorists in the post-9/11 era: the 2003 firebombings of several 4x4 dealerships in the Los Angeles area.
After FBI agents arrested the wrong man for the crime, Cottrell remorselessly teased the authorities with gloating emails to The Los Angeles Times. When they finally caught up with him and brought him to court, prosecutors made much of his brazenness in seeking a heavy sentence. His friends and family say his behaviour reflected more his autism than the mind of a domestic terrorist.
The jury was never told of his illness, which is known to trigger inappropriate behaviour, and his case is now a cause célèbre for some of the world's most prominent physicists. Stephen Hawking has lobbied to have Cottrell's brutal prison regime improved so that so he can continue his research.
In an open letter, Professor Hawking and seven other physicists asked for Mr Cottrell to be moved from "nightmarish" violent inmates and for restrictions to be eased so that he could work as a postgraduate student. They wanted him to fulfil "his promise for an outstanding career in theoretical physics, a career in which he could make major contributions to society, through science".
Soon after he was transferred to another federal prison with fewer violent inmates but the US attorney's office in Los Angeles is opposing an appeal for a reduction in sentence. Cottrell is also appealing against the fine of $3.5m.
Back on Brandywine, the media attention is draining away, but the neighbours are still casting glances at Mrs Groves' yellow house. For the moment her son is in shock but unrepentant. "To tell you the truth," he said, "I never even thought about the environmental impact of the Hummer in the months I spent thinking about buying it."
He is thinking about it a bit more now that the media storm is passing over.
http://environment.independent.co.uk/climate_change/article2785468.ece
