Last Thursday, we pulled our rented Corolla into a Los Angeles service station and watched, amazed, as a tankful of unleaded petrol - about 10 gallons - clocked in at precisely $17.55.
Mistaking my double-take for criticism, the station owner shrugged apologetically : "Whaddya do? It's gone up by 25 cents in a couple weeks." Right. In other words, a couple of weeks ago, we could have filled the tank for about €15 .
A friendly type filling his shiny, fat Chevy got in on the consolation: "You think you got troubles?" he boomed, "I get 16 miles to the gallon on this thing. The jeep at home gets eight. If gas keeps going up at this rate . . . jeez."
Meanwhile, Colin Powell was laying out some iffy charges against a country that just happens to hold the world's second-largest oil resources. Do Americans (for whom I have a great fondness) see the connection? Not a lot.
We have our share of gas-guzzling, road-hogging SUVs (sports utility vehicles) in this country, speeding around the rugged foothills of Dalkey, where, like, you just can't go without a four-wheel drive. But nothing can prepare a visitor for the swarms of them careering around southern California, monsters the size of pick-up trucks, often with an expensively-highlighted 19-year-old behind the wheel, mobile glued to an ear. To have one on either side of you on a freeway is like hurtling blindsided through a terrifyingly narrow tunnel.
By our Californian count, about four or five in 10 vehicles was an SUV. Across the US, they accounted for a quarter of new car sales last year - and rising, despite the threat of war (or because of it, depending on who is talking) and a slumping economy. Never mind the fact that they belch out 43 per cent more greenhouse gases than cars and have pulled the average fuel economy of the national new car fleet down to 20 miles to the gallon; official US policy positively encourages them.
Classed as light trucks, they come exempt from the gas emission, fuel economy and safety standards that apply to cars. Tax laws allow businesses to deduct $30,000 or more for supersized vehicles like the Hummer H2, the current object of desire, a three-ton spin-off of the army personnel carrier, that gets 11 miles to the gallon. All this in a country that has less than 5 per cent of the world's population but spews out 24 per cent of its greenhouse gas emissions. Short of capturing and holding those fine Iraqi oilfields in "trust", how much further up the fundaments of the oil men and car manufacturers can you go? This is Bush's America, after all, the one that walked away from Kyoto.
And clearly, many a soccer-mom with children, groceries and ski equipment for weekends in Tahoe is delighted with him. The New York Times ran a timely piece a few days ago on the SUV phenomenon, in which one mom in her Chevy Suburban explained the appeal. "How else am I going to get four children from A to B? I don't think we're going to solve the world's problems by getting rid of SUVs."
It's not much of an argument, but she's hanging on to hers. "It gives you a barrier, makes you feel less threatened. There's no way you can be ignored in an SUV."
Another woman in a typically massive black Land Cruiser, called it her "armour. The world is becoming a harder and more violent place to live, so we wrap ourselves with these big vehicles. It's like riding a horse. You have more power."
A man thinking of buying an orange Hummer H2 was asked if he felt guilt. "Not one iota. I like having all that metal around me. It's got that massive feel-good factor." That probably covers it (and don't mention the smog and the roll-over risks). But Irish SUV owners and aspirants nodding empathetically should beware. Over there, a grassroots anti-SUV backlash is building nicely. Columnist Arianna Huffington's Detroit Project has been running much-discussed TV ads linking SUVs to support of terrorism. A coalition of Christian groups is running an ad asking: "What would Jesus drive?" Posters at an anti-war rally read : "Draft SUV drivers first." Californian Democrat Senator Barbara Boxer has been working to close the Hummer-sized tax loophole.
The view among thinking Americans (and there are plenty of them) is that it's well past time for citizens to start making the connection between consumption and social impact. Arianna Huffington "pressed a button that was ready to be detonated", on a topic made more acute by the threat of war in Iraq, according to a Columbia University professor, Todd Gitlin, quoted in the New York Times. "It is the transmutation of a big issue into a neighbourhood issue. The SUV is the place where foreign policy meets the road."
As nations brace themselves for Saturday's anti-war rallies, it's worth remembering that these issues are not the sole province of American neighbourhoods. (Like so many, our extended family lost a relative in the Twin Towers.) Still less do they belong to George Bush, about whom Nelson Mandela said recently: "One power, with a President who has no foresight and cannot think properly, is now wanting to plunge the world into a holocaust." Time to take a stand.