Polar Ice Caps Are Melting Faster Than Ever... More And More Land Is Being Devastated By Drought... Rising Waters Are Drowning Low-Lying Communities... By Any Measure, Earth Is At ... The Tipping Point
The climate is crashing, and global warming is to blame. Why the crisis hit so soon--and what we can do about it
By JEFFREY KLUGER

No one can say exactly what it looks like when a planet takes ill, but it probably looks a lot like Earth. Never mind what you've heard about global warming as a slow-motion emergency that would take decades to play out. Suddenly and unexpectedly, the crisis is upon us.

It certainly looked that way last week as the atmospheric bomb that was Cyclone Larry--a Category 5 storm with wind bursts that reached 180 m.p.h.--exploded through northeastern Australia. It certainly looked that way last year as curtains of fire and dust turned the skies of Indonesia orange, thanks to drought-fueled blazes sweeping the island nation. It certainly looks that way as sections of ice the size of small states calve from the disintegrating Arctic and Antarctic. And it certainly looks that way as the sodden wreckage of New Orleans continues to molder, while the waters of the Atlantic gather themselves for a new hurricane season just two months away. Disasters have always been with us and surely always will be. But when they hit this hard and come this fast--when the emergency becomes commonplace--something has gone grievously wrong. That something is global warming.

The image of Earth as organism--famously dubbed Gaia by environmentalist James Lovelock-- has probably been overworked, but that's not to say the planet can't behave like a living thing, and these days, it's a living thing fighting a fever. From heat waves to storms to floods to fires to massive glacial melts, the global climate seems to be crashing around us. Scientists have been calling this shot for decades. This is precisely what they have been warning would happen if we continued pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, trapping the heat that flows in from the sun and raising global temperatures.

Environmentalists and lawmakers spent years shouting at one another about whether the grim forecasts were true, but in the past five years or so, the serious debate has quietly ended. Global warming, even most skeptics have concluded, is the real deal, and human activity has been causing it. If there was any consolation, it was that the glacial pace of nature would give us decades or even centuries to sort out the problem.

But glaciers, it turns out, can move with surprising speed, and so can nature. What few people reckoned on was that global climate systems are booby-trapped with tipping points and feedback loops, thresholds past which the slow creep of environmental decay gives way to sudden and self-perpetuating collapse. Pump enough CO2 into the sky, and that last part per million of greenhouse gas behaves like the 212th degree Fahrenheit that turns a pot of hot water into a plume of billowing steam. Melt enough Greenland ice, and you reach the point at which you're not simply dripping meltwater into the sea but dumping whole glaciers. By one recent measure, several Greenland ice sheets have doubled their rate of slide, and just last week the journal Science published a study suggesting that by the end of the century, the world could be locked in to an eventual rise in sea levels of as much as 20 ft. Nature, it seems, has finally got a bellyful of us.

"Things are happening a lot faster than anyone predicted," says Bill Chameides, chief scientist for the advocacy group Environmental Defense and a former professor of atmospheric chemistry. "The last 12 months have been alarming." Adds Ruth Curry of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts: "The ripple through the scientific community is palpable."

And it's not just scientists who are taking notice. Even as nature crosses its tipping points, the public seems to have reached its own. For years, popular skepticism about climatological science stood in the way of addressing the problem, but the naysayers--many of whom were on the payroll of energy companies--have become an increasingly marginalized breed. In a new TIME/ ABC News/ Stanford University poll, 85% of respondents agree that global warming probably is happening. Moreover, most respondents say they want some action taken. Of those polled, 87% believe the government should either encourage or require lowering of power-plant emissions, and 85% think something should be done to get cars to use less gasoline. Even Evangelical Christians, once one of the most reliable columns in the conservative base, are demanding action, most notably in February, when 86 Christian leaders formed the Evangelical Climate Initiative, demanding that Congress regulate greenhouse gases.

A collection of new global-warming books is hitting the shelves in response to that awakening interest, followed closely by TV and theatrical documentaries. The most notable of them is An Inconvenient Truth, due out in May, a profile of former Vice President Al Gore and his climate-change work, which is generating a lot of prerelease buzz over an unlikely topic and an equally unlikely star. For all its lack of Hollywood flash, the film compensates by conveying both the hard science of global warming and Gore's particular passion.

Such public stirrings are at last getting the attention of politicians and business leaders, who may not always respond to science but have a keen nose for where votes and profits lie. State and local lawmakers have started taking action to curb emissions, and major corporations are doing the same. Wal-Mart has begun installing wind turbines on its stores to generate electricity and is talking about putting solar reflectors over its parking lots. HSBC, the world's second largest bank, has pledged to neutralize its carbon output by investing in wind farms and other green projects. Even President Bush, hardly a favorite of greens, now acknowledges climate change and boasts of the steps he is taking to fight it. Most of those steps, however, involve research and voluntary emissions controls, not exactly the laws with teeth scientists are calling for.

Is it too late to reverse the changes global warming has wrought? That's still not clear. Reducing our emissions output year to year is hard enough. Getting it low enough so that the atmosphere can heal is a multigenerational commitment. "Ecosystems are usually able to maintain themselves," says Terry Chapin, a biologist and professor of ecology at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. "But eventually they get pushed to the limit of tolerance."

CO2 AND THE POLES

As a tiny component of our atmosphere, carbon dioxide helped warm Earth to comfort levels we are all used to. But too much of it does an awful lot of damage. The gas represents just a few hundred parts per million (p.p.m.) in the overall air blanket, but they're powerful parts because they allow sunlight to stream in but prevent much of the heat from radiating back out. During the last ice age, the atmosphere's CO2 concentration was just 180 p.p.m., putting Earth into a deep freeze. After the glaciers retreated but before the dawn of the modern era, the total had risen to a comfortable 280 p.p.m. In just the past century and a half, we have pushed the level to 381 p.p.m., and we're feeling the effects. Of the 20 hottest years on record, 19 occurred in the 1980s or later. According to NASA scientists, 2005 was one of the hottest years in more than a century.

It's at the North and South poles that those steambath conditions are felt particularly acutely, with glaciers and ice caps crumbling to slush. Once the thaw begins, a number of mechanisms kick in to keep it going. Greenland is a vivid example. Late last year, glaciologist Eric Rignot of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., and Pannir Kanagaratnam, a research assistant professor at the University of Kansas, analyzed data from Canadian and European satellites and found that Greenland ice is not just melting but doing so more than twice as fast, with 53 cu. mi. draining away into the sea last year alone, compared with 22 cu. mi. in 1996. A cubic mile of water is about five times the amount Los Angeles uses in a year.

Dumping that much water into the ocean is a very dangerous thing. Icebergs don't raise sea levels when they melt because they're floating, which means they have displaced all the water they're ever going to. But ice on land, like Greenland's, is a different matter. Pour that into oceans that are already rising (because warm water expands), and you deluge shorelines. By some estimates, the entire Greenland ice sheet would be enough to raise global sea levels 23 ft., swallowing up large parts of coastal Florida and most of Bangladesh. The Antarctic holds enough ice to raise sea levels more than 215 ft.

FEEDBACK LOOPS

One of the reasons the loss of the planet's ice cover is accelerating is that as the poles' bright white surface shrinks, it changes the relationship of Earth and the sun. Polar ice is so reflective that 90% of the sunlight that strikes it simply bounces back into space, taking much of its energy with it. Ocean water does just the opposite, absorbing 90% of the energy it receives. The more energy it retains, the warmer it gets, with the result that each mile of ice that melts vanishes faster than the mile that preceded it.

That is what scientists call a feedback loop, and it's a nasty one, since once you uncap the Arctic Ocean, you unleash another beast: the comparatively warm layer of water about 600 ft. deep that circulates in and out of the Atlantic. "Remove the ice," says Woods Hole's Curry, "and the water starts talking to the atmosphere, releasing its heat. This is not a good thing."

A similar feedback loop is melting permafrost, usually defined as land that has been continuously frozen for two years or more. There's a lot of earthly real estate that qualifies, and much of it has been frozen much longer than two years--since the end of the last ice age, or at least 8,000 years ago. Sealed inside that cryonic time capsule are layers of partially decayed organic matter, rich in carbon. In high-altitude regions of Alaska, Canada and Siberia, the soil is warming and decomposing, releasing gases that will turn into methane and CO2. That, in turn, could lead to more warming and permafrost thaw, says research scientist David Lawrence of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colo. And how much carbon is socked away in Arctic soils? Lawrence puts the figure at 200 gigatons to 800 gigatons. The total human carbon output is only 7 gigatons a year.

One result of all that is warmer oceans, and a result of warmer oceans can be, paradoxically, colder continents within a hotter globe. Ocean currents running between warm and cold regions serve as natural thermoregulators, distributing heat from the equator toward the poles. The Gulf Stream, carrying warmth up from the tropics, is what keeps Europe's climate relatively mild. Whenever Europe is cut off from the Gulf Stream, temperatures plummet. At the end of the last ice age, the warm current was temporarily blocked, and temperatures in Europe fell as much as 10°F, locking the continent in glaciers.

What usually keeps the Gulf Stream running is that warm water is lighter than cold water, so it floats on the surface. As it reaches Europe and releases its heat, the current grows denser and sinks, flowing back to the south and crossing under the northbound Gulf Stream until it reaches the tropics and starts to warm again. The cycle works splendidly, provided the water remains salty enough. But if it becomes diluted by freshwater, the salt concentration drops, and the water gets lighter, idling on top and stalling the current. Last December, researchers associated with Britain's National Oceanography Center reported that one component of the system that drives the Gulf Stream has slowed about 30% since 1957. It's the increased release of Arctic and Greenland meltwater that appears to be causing the problem, introducing a gush of freshwater that's overwhelming the natural cycle. In a global-warming world, it's unlikely that any amount of cooling that resulted from this would be sufficient to support glaciers, but it could make things awfully uncomfortable.

"The big worry is that the whole climate of Europe will change," says Adrian Luckman, senior lecturer in geography at the University of Wales, Swansea. "We in the U.K. are on the same latitude as Alaska. The reason we can live here is the Gulf Stream."

DROUGHT

As fast as global warming is transforming the oceans and the ice caps, it's having an even more immediate effect on land. People, animals and plants living in dry, mountainous regions like the western U.S. make it through summer thanks to snowpack that collects on peaks all winter and slowly melts off in warm months. Lately the early arrival of spring and the unusually blistering summers have caused the snowpack to melt too early, so that by the time it's needed, it's largely gone. Climatologist Philip Mote of the University of Washington has compared decades of snowpack levels in Washington, Oregon and California and found that they are a fraction of what they were in the 1940s, and some snowpacks have vanished entirely.

Global warming is tipping other regions of the world into drought in different ways. Higher temperatures bake moisture out of soil faster, causing dry regions that live at the margins to cross the line into full-blown crisis. Meanwhile, El Niño events--the warm pooling of Pacific waters that periodically drives worldwide climate patterns and has been occurring more frequently in global-warming years--further inhibit precipitation in dry areas of Africa and East Asia. According to a recent study by NCAR, the percentage of Earth's surface suffering drought has more than doubled since the 1970s.

FLORA AND FAUNA

Hot, dry land can be murder on flora and fauna, and both are taking a bad hit. Wildfires in such regions as Indonesia, the western U.S. and even inland Alaska have been increasing as timberlands and forest floors grow more parched. The blazes create a feedback loop of their own, pouring more carbon into the atmosphere and reducing the number of trees, which inhale CO2 and release oxygen.

Those forests that don't succumb to fire die in other, slower ways. Connie Millar, a paleoecologist for the U.S. Forest Service, studies the history of vegetation in the Sierra Nevada. Over the past 100 years, she has found, the forests have shifted their tree lines as much as 100 ft. upslope, trying to escape the heat and drought of the lowlands. Such slow-motion evacuation may seem like a sensible strategy, but when you're on a mountain, you can go only so far before you run out of room. "Sometimes we say the trees are going to heaven because they're walking off the mountaintops," Millar says.

Across North America, warming-related changes are mowing down other flora too. Manzanita bushes in the West are dying back; some prickly pear cacti have lost their signature green and are instead a sickly pink; pine beetles in western Canada and the U.S. are chewing their way through tens of millions of acres of forest, thanks to warmer winters. The beetles may even breach the once insurmountable Rocky Mountain divide, opening up a path into the rich timbering lands of the American Southeast.

With habitats crashing, animals that live there are succumbing too. Environmental groups can tick off scores of species that have been determined to be at risk as a result of global warming. Last year, researchers in Costa Rica announced that two-thirds of 110 species of colorful harlequin frogs have vanished in the past 30 years, with the severity of each season's die-off following in lockstep with the severity of that year's warming.

In Alaska, salmon populations are at risk as melting permafrost pours mud into rivers, burying the gravel the fish need for spawning. Small animals such as bushy-tailed wood rats, alpine chipmunks and piñon mice are being chased upslope by rising temperatures, following the path of the fleeing trees. And with sea ice vanishing, polar bears--prodigious swimmers but not inexhaustible ones--are starting to turn up drowned. "There will be no polar ice by 2060," says Larry Schweiger, president of the National Wildlife Federation. "Somewhere along that path, the polar bear drops out."

WHAT ABOUT US?

It is fitting, perhaps, that as the species causing all the problems, we're suffering the destruction of our habitat too, and we have experienced that loss in terrible ways. Ocean waters have warmed by a full degree Fahrenheit since 1970, and warmer water is like rocket fuel for typhoons and hurricanes. Two studies last year found that in the past 35 years the number of Category 4 and 5 hurricanes worldwide has doubled while the wind speed and duration of all hurricanes has jumped 50%. Since atmospheric heat is not choosy about the water it warms, tropical storms could start turning up in some decidedly nontropical places. "There's a school of thought that sea surface temperatures are warming up toward Canada," says Greg Holland, senior scientist for NCAR in Boulder. "If so, you're likely to get tropical cyclones there, but we honestly don't know."

WHAT WE CAN DO

So much for environmental collapse happening in so many places at once has at last awakened much of the world, particularly the 141 nations that have ratified the Kyoto treaty to reduce emissions--an imperfect accord, to be sure, but an accord all the same. The U.S., however, which is home to less than 5% of Earth's population but produces 25% of CO2 emissions, remains intransigent. Many environmentalists declared the Bush Administration hopeless from the start, and while that may have been premature, it's undeniable that the White House's environmental record--from the abandonment of Kyoto to the President's broken campaign pledge to control carbon output to the relaxation of emission standards--has been dismal. George W. Bush's recent rhetorical nods to America's oil addiction and his praise of such alternative fuel sources as switchgrass have yet to be followed by real initiatives.

The anger surrounding all that exploded recently when NASA researcher Jim Hansen, director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies and a longtime leader in climate-change research, complained that he had been harassed by White House appointees as he tried to sound the global-warming alarm. "The way democracy is supposed to work, the presumption is that the public is well informed," he told TIME. "They're trying to deny the science." Up against such resistance, many environmental groups have resolved simply to wait out this Administration and hope for something better in 2009.

The Republican-dominated Congress has not been much more encouraging. Senators John McCain and Joe Lieberman have twice been unable to get through the Senate even mild measures to limit carbon. Senators Pete Domenici and Jeff Bingaman, both of New Mexico and both ranking members of the chamber's Energy Committee, have made global warming a high-profile matter. A white paper issued in February will be the subject of an investigatory Senate conference next week. A House delegation recently traveled to Antarctica, Australia and New Zealand to visit researchers studying climate change. "Of the 10 of us, only three were believers," says Representative Sherwood Boehlert of New York. "Every one of the others said this opened their eyes."

Boehlert himself has long fought the environmental fight, but if the best that can be said for most lawmakers is that they are finally recognizing the global-warming problem, there's reason to wonder whether they will have the courage to reverse it. Increasingly, state and local governments are filling the void. The mayors of more than 200 cities have signed the U.S. Mayors Climate Protection Agreement, pledging, among other things, that they will meet the Kyoto goal of reducing greenhouse-gas emissions in their cities to 1990 levels by 2012. Nine eastern states have established the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative for the purpose of developing a cap-and-trade program that would set ceilings on industrial emissions and allow companies that overperform to sell pollution credits to those that underperform-- the same smart, incentive-based strategy that got sulfur dioxide under control and reduced acid rain. And California passed the nation's toughest automobile- emissions law last summer.

"There are a whole series of things that demonstrate that people want to act and want their government to act," says Fred Krupp, president of Environmental Defense. Krupp and others believe that we should probably accept that it's too late to prevent CO2 concentrations from climbing to 450 p.p.m. (or 70 p.p.m. higher than where they are now). From there, however, we should be able to stabilize them and start to dial them back down.

That goal should be attainable. Curbing global warming may be an order of magnitude harder than, say, eradicating smallpox or putting a man on the moon. But is it moral not to try? We did not so much march toward the environmental precipice as drunkenly reel there, snapping at the scientific scolds who told us we had a problem.

The scolds, however, knew what they were talking about. In a solar system crowded with sister worlds that either emerged stillborn like Mercury and Venus or died in infancy like Mars, we're finally coming to appreciate the knife-blade margins within which life can thrive. For more than a century we've been monkeying with those margins. It's long past time we set them right.


With reporting by Greg Fulton/ Atlanta, Dan Cray/ Los Angeles, Rita Healy/ Denver, Eric Roston/ Washington, With reporting by David Bjerklie, Andrea Dorfman/ New York, Andrea Gerlin/ London

Che Rides Again (On a Mountain Bike)

by Nick Miroff

Has Latin America ever had such a unifying figure? At political rallies, his visage is held aloft as a beacon to regional independence and self-determination. He's helped forge new trade partnerships to spur economic growth and alleviate poverty. And his leadership has fanned a gale-force electoral trend that's sweeping the hemisphere to topple one pro-Washington government after the next. Who is this grand inductor of Latin American leftism? Venezuelan fireball Hugo Chavez? Blue-collar Brazilian Lula Ignacio da Silva? Bolivia's coca-farmer-cum-president, Evo Morales? ¡Epa! It's George W. Bush, the accidental revolutionary. In the past five years, the swaggering Texan has inspired a leftward surge that is uniting Latin America and threatening to knock Che Guevara right off all those natty t-shirts. When Che's ill-fated insurgency ended in the jungles of Bolivia with his death in 1967, his vision of a single, unified, socialist continent remained utterly unfulfilled. U.S.-backed right-wing military dictators would rule much of Latin America over the ensuing two decades, and many of Che's followers would be tortured and killed in efforts to overthrow them. As democracy returned to the region at the end of the Cold War, most Latin American governments rushed to embrace the "Washington consensus" -- market-oriented liberalization policies that cut social spending and privatized national industries in order to pay down national debts. But the formula, pushed on the region by successive American presidents, largely failed to deliver the goods and left entire governments bankrupt and beholden to foreign lenders. For Latin America's angry, marginalized, impoverished masses, already-threadbare social safety nets only unraveled further. "The macroeconomic proposals of the Washington consensus have not been working," says Guillermo Delgado, professor of Latin American Studies at UC Santa Cruz. "That model was supposed to create prosperity and, after so many years, such prosperity has not been seen and class polarization has grown deeper." Sensing an opportunity, new social and political movements in the region began marshalling their forces. Then George W. Bush came along, combining Yankee hubris with a Che-worthy radicalizing touch. Bush has since presided over one of the most significant political re-alignments in the history of the Western Hemisphere. By this summer, every major Latin American nation but Colombia is likely to be run by elected leaders with stronger backgrounds in Marx than free markets. If Cold War-era "domino theory" has been a bust in the Middle East, it's working with textbook precision in Latin America. Late last year, voters overwhelmingly elected former coca-grower Evo Morales, the founder of Bolivia's "Movement Toward Socialism" party, who fancies himself a "nightmare" for the Bush administration. Then, in January, Chilean voters chose socialist candidate Michele Bachelet, a torture victim of the Pinochet regime, as the nation's first woman president. Leftists now rule as well in Venezuela, Uruguay, Brazil, and Argentina, and are leading in upcoming elections in both Peru and Mexico, the region's electoral grand prize. Even recycled Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega -- "a hoodlum," according to Roger Noriega, formerly the U.S.'s top Latin America official -- appears poised for a comeback when Nicaraguan voters go to the polls in November. Though Latin America's national borders won't melt away anytime soon, Che's vision of pan-Latin cooperation has already begun to materialize. Venezuela, Brazil, and Argentina recently announced a $20 billion plan to build a trans-national gas pipeline through the Amazon. Chile has opened dialogue with landlocked Bolivia, easing a long-simmering feud over seaport access that stretches back more than a century. Cuba, that tropical bête noire of the White House, still uses doctor diplomacy and sends physicians all over the region -- only now, it receives billions of dollars worth of Venezuelan oil in return. And Mercosur, a South American common market dominated by Brazil, has emerged as a rival to the faltering U.S.-sponsored Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). Mercosur member states blocked ratification of the FTAA at the 2005 Summit of the Americas in Argentina. When Bush arrived to deliver a speech at the conference, he was greeted by mobs of angry street protestors who burned American flags, a Burger King, and unflattering effigies in his likeness. "Fascist Bush!" they chanted, "you are the terrorist!" Fencing Off the "Backyard"? Bush's overwhelming unpopularity in Latin America is especially disappointing given that he put Latin American relations at the top of his foreign-policy agenda after taking office. No other U.S. president had gone to Latin America for his first visit abroad, and even after 9/11, Bush maintained that the United States "has no more important relationship in the world than the one we have with Mexico." At every turn, he'd trot out his twangy Spanish in order to burnish his Latin cred. Since then, Latin America has only drifted further south. Support for the U.S. war in Iraq is notably abysmal. Only a handful of countries in the region backed the invasion to oust Saddam Hussein and all were minor players with the exception of Colombia, the fifth-largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid. That Washington is willing to spend lavishly on drug eradication in the Andean region but little on development or public health has not been lost on the new ascendant left, either. In a recent Zogby poll, fewer than 20% of Latin American elites (typically the most politically conservative voters in the region) gave Bush a favorable approval rating. Only 6% said Bush's policies were better than those of his predecessors. Some analysts have attributed Latin America's political shift to U.S. foreign policy negligence, arguing that, because the Bush administration is so consumed with Iraq, American officials are now incapable of wielding effective diplomatic influence in the region. "After 9/11, Washington effectively lost interest in Latin America," writes Peter Hakim, President of Inter-American Dialogue, in the January/February issue of Foreign Affairs. "Since then, the attention the United States has paid to the region has been sporadic and narrowly targeted at particularly troubling or urgent situations." This interpretation suggests Bush has been a kind of inattentive steward, too busy riding that mountain bike to notice the mutiny going on beneath his nose. Worse yet, Hakim believes the United States has neither the resources nor the will to alter the course. But Latin America's leftward shift stems from more than White House distraction. It's not that the United States is acting aloof with its neighbors; rather, we're the worst-behaved homeowner on the block. We fly the biggest flag, make the loudest demands, and on top of it all, we don't even like having guests over. Sure, the United States has treated Latin America as its "backyard" for two hundred years -- but now, Bush's own party wants to fence it off. House Republicans recently approved a plan to erect a 2,000-mile, Israeli-style barrier that would wall off Mexico and the rest of Latin America. The plan isn't expected to survive a Senate vote, but it sums up the current state of north-south relations quite well. And it's been a godsend for the presidential campaign of left-wing Mexico City Mayor Manuel Lopez Obrador, the leading candidate in the July 2nd elections and a frequent Bush critic. For Lopez Obrador, the border fence proposal is proof that NAFTA is faltering and that outgoing President Vicente Fox was on the wrong end of the rope in his faux-ranchero friendship with Bush. Fox had staked his presidential reputation on securing an immigration accord with the Bush administration, and his failure has made excellent fodder for Lopez Obrador's campaign. His election victory in July would leave the last domino leaning right on Washington's doorstep. Helping Hugo The Bush administration has been most frazzled by the growing regional influence of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, whom Donald Rumsfeld recently likened to Hitler. Chavez has his own nickname for Bush -- "Mr. Danger" -- and he's effectively shaped the American president into his political foil. As Bush pushes the region away, Chavez pulls. The Venezuelan leader has fashioned himself into a kind of Latin American Robin Hood, raking in tanker-loads of petrodollars in order to bankroll massive social programs and regional integration schemes. He's provided oil at subsidized rates to poor countries throughout the Caribbean, even sending discounted winter heating oil to low-income residents in Boston and the Bronx -- an act of mockery as much as aid. The Bush administration's tacit endorsement of a 2002 coup that briefly ousted Chavez has left the U.S.'s rhetoric about respect for democracy ringing hypocritical. At the World Social Forum in Caracas in January, Chavez t-shirts were reportedly de rigueur, along with all the other standard-fare knickknacks of rebellion: Castro-hats, Zapatista stickers, and anything red with Che on it. By comparison, Bush apparel was in short supply. Granted, he did show up on a few banners and posters that weren't slated for immolation, like one that read "Chavez yes, Bush no!" But twenty years from now, who knows? Latin America may be much better off then. And perhaps he'll finally get the "Gracias Bush" he deserves -- with his own face on a silkscreen. Nick Miroff is a student at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. He has reported from Latin America for National Public Radio, Mother Jones, and the Oakland Tribune. Copyright 2006 Nick Miroff

My other car is a plane

THERE'S something peculiarly egregious, something antagonizing about the 2007 Mercedes-Benz GL, the company's new full-size, 15-mpg sport-utility vehicle, which might be described as a Cadillac Escalade with a hankering for Czechoslovakia. For one thing, it goes to show that, even though the full-size SUV market has fallen off dramatically in the last year, there are still sufficient numbers of selfish rotters out there to constitute an appealing market segment.

Mercedes-Benz executives offer this wholly meritless defense: Many of its customers leave the brand because the company does not offer a full-size SUV that meets their needs, which is to say, a seven-passenger, 17-foot 4x4 with a 9,300-pound towing capacity. At this point in the presentation in Napa Valley last week, execs showed slides of the GL pulling a 30-foot boat. So there you have it: Mercedes' audience of water-skiing polygamists is underserved.


Need has very little to do with it. This segment is about want, naked and unquenchable, I-got-mine-you-get-bent appetite. It's well established that the vast majority of these vehicles never touch gravel, never carry more than a couple of people, and never tow anything heavier than the weight of their owner's childhood traumas.

Most people who buy the GL won't know a Class IV hitch from a Mark 48 torpedo. And I, for one, am not going to congratulate some Bel-Air singleton for his wise vehicle purchase when it is so patently purblind and morally retrograde.

Plainly, I'm disappointed that Mercedes-Benz — the company of Gullwings and 500Es, of elegant engineering and F1 cars — has decided to get into delivery van business. And yet I cannot fairly blame the company, which being a corporation is doing what corporations do in the absence of governance: Make as much money as is within its ken to do.

The case for the GL was compelling: As one of three products to come out of the company's newly enlarged Alabama factory — the others are the redesigned M-class and the new R-class luxury van — the GL's development and production costs are shared. The powertrain, suspension, electronics and auxiliary systems are common with the M-class.

Purely as a piece of machinery, the GL is exemplary. With a unit-body chassis of high-strength steel, four-wheel independent air suspension with automatic damping, all-wheel drive, a powerful 4.6-liter V8 and seven-speed automatic transmission, and a full complement of safety and convenience features, the GL is a mighty, mellow dreadnaught, roomy, comfortable and — compared with its Iowa-class competitors — reasonably light. Its curb weight of 5,249 pounds is several hundred pounds lighter than the Escalade, Infiniti QX56, Lexus LX470 or the Lincoln Annihilator.

And, while the full-size SUV segment was a lot more tempting five years ago (when the GL was planned), it is still surprisingly robust. Early returns on the new Chevy Tahoe and Escalade look good for GM. Audi just launched its own seven-passenger full-sizer, the Q7, and BMW is in the midst of taffy-stretching its X5 for the 2007 model year.

Why, in the midst of a slow-rolling energy crisis, an unpopular war in a region of the world made strategic only by its oil, and the globe's climbing mercury, should precisely the wrong kinds of vehicles remain so popular?

One reason is surely the tax breaks associated with 3-ton SUVs: business owners get a $25,000 tax break on the purchase of full-size SUVs (scaled back from $100,000 in 2004) and five-year depreciation schedule. For people taking advantage of this cozy corner of Section 179, the GL — with a base price anticipated to be about $60,000 — will be virtually free. That makes your $4,000 hybrid tax break look pretty punk, doesn't it?

The tax code is the most obvious point of inflection between vehicle choice and public policy. Another knee-point is CAFE — that's Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards, in case you forgot, and who could blame you?

Last year, the Bush administration proposed raising the light-truck standard — long frozen at about 20 mpg — to 24 mpg by 2011, an incrementalism that is marvelously measured, to say the least. Meanwhile, the administration plans to scrap the current CAFE structure in favor of a size-based regime co-written by the automakers, with larger vehicles required to achieve lower mileage.

Incidentally, some SUVs are so large that they transcend fuel-economy standards altogether. Vehicles with a gross-vehicle-weight rating over 10,000 pounds — such as the Hummer H2 and the heavy-duty version of the Suburban — are not counted among fleet ratings that automakers need to hit.

We have been told recently that we are addicted to oil, but we seem to be unable to do much about it. California's clean-air bureaus are trying to regulate carbon emissions from vehicles and are being sued by manufacturers and the federal government for their trouble.

Raising fuel taxes cannot be accomplished, no matter the mood of national urgency and no matter the obscenity of oil companies' profits. Fuel taxes are doubly problematic: For one thing, they are regressive, hurting lower-income consumers; for another, buyers of luxury vehicles are less likely to be dissuaded from their giant purchase.

What about all the alternative vehicle technologies we've been promised? Thanks to a decade-long stonewalling by Big Oil and the trucking industry, it has taken until this year to phase in clean-diesel requirements that will give automakers the slightest hope of meeting 50-state emissions requirements (diesel-powered vehicles can be 25% to 40% more fuel-efficient than gas-powered vehicles). Other technologies — bio-diesel, hybrids, ethanol, plug-ins, fuel-cells — can in the near term only nibble at the edges of our 20 million barrels per day of oil consumption.

If we were serious about oil dependence, we would dramatically raise fuel economy standards, impose gas-guzzler taxes on noncommercial light trucks and lower the national speed limit.

None of that is going to happen.

So, in the face of this enormous governmental and regulatory inaction, this paralysis and denial, a curious new market equilibrium has arisen. Call it the marketplace of shame.

SUV owners are mocked. Late-night comics have become scolds. Evangelicals have enlisted Jesus Christ himself in the "What Would Jesus Drive" campaign. The crass and criminal Sopranos — Tony and Carmela — drive an Escalade and a Porsche Cayenne Turbo. If you don't think their characters are defined by these vehicle choices, think again.

The cultural opprobrium that afflicts SUV owners — often overheated, occasionally misdirected, frequently ignored — is virtually the only disincentive in the market, the only defense the rest of us have from these rolling hot tubs of avarice. People feel slightly embarrassed, even a little ashamed. Good.

It's having an effect. Sales of these vehicles are declining, and it's possible that one day they will align with actual customer need — after all, if people truly need a full-size 4x4, they should be able to have them. Meanwhile, the carmakers are finding ways to give people the utility and all-weather agility they want without the massive steel edifice.

One day, to describe a vehicle like the Mercedes-Benz GL as a very good full-size SUV — which it is, by the way — will be a contradiction in terms.

*

2007 Mercedes-Benz GL450

Base price: $58,000 (est.)

Price, as tested: $67,000 (est.)

Powertrain: 4.6-liter, dual-overhead cam, 32-valve V8 with variable-valve timing and two-stage intake manifold; seven-speed automatic transmission; full-time all-wheel drive (optional two-speed transfer case in off-road package)

Horsepower: 335 at 6,000 rpm

Torque: 339 pound-feet at 2,700-5,000 rpm

Curb weight: 5,249 pounds

0-60 mph: 7.5 seconds

Wheelbase: 121.1 inches

Overall length: 200.3 inches

EPA fuel economy: 14 miles per gallon city, 19 mpg highway (est). Mixed mileage 15 mpg (observed)

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bargainshunt Shopaholic Member

Date Posted: Mar/16/2006 5:08 PM look here Reply Quote Top Bottom Edit

studia Happy Member

Date Posted: Mar/16/2006 6:33 PM Camry Thread Reply Quote Top Bottom Edit

lousygolfer Senior Member

Date Posted: Mar/16/2006 10:25 PM Yes, you can usually get good deals on last year's models, but those will usually sell out by January of the new year, sometimes mid-fall even. Try shopping on the last day or two of the month. Car dealers want to clear their inventory then for at least two reasons: (a) their sales incentives (both the dealership's and the individual salesperson's commissions and bonuses) are usually based on their monthly figures; and (b) the dealership has to pay for insurance for the entire month on a car even if it is sold on the morning of the 1st day of the month, so they want to avoid that charge. You can try getting the new car price list from www.consumerreports.com which tells you the dealer's actual invoice and will let you know what dealer incentives are available that month, so you can see the dealer's real cost, not just their claimed "invoice price." However, the first report costs $12 and subsequent ones are $10 (although they have unlimited access for something like $39/mo.) Consumerreports.com also has some bargaining and shopping tips on their website. Get the best price on a particular car you want from Dealer A, then take that price to Dealer B or C and get them to beat it. Then go back to Dealer A with the new lower price and get the dealers to enter into a bidding war for your dollars. Always act levelheaded and never get really excited about any given car - you don't want to appear desparate or the salesperson won't bargain much. Be prepared to walk away from any deal and if you don't like what the salesperson is trying to spew in his/her sales pitch, don't be afraid to tell him/her to cut the crap. Tell the salesperson "My bottom line on this car is $XXXX dollars out the door with tax, title and everything. If you want to sell me this vehicle, you have two minutes to agree to that price or I'm headed to your competitor's dealership." If you're a woman, a minority or an elderly person, be on the lookout, because you probably will be stereotyped into a demographic of suckers and weak-willed persons who can be pushed and pulled into paying a lot for a car. A former client (a real dirtbag) was a car salesman and he used to tell me they would push non-white, non-male and non-elderly clients a whole lot harder into buying all sorts of useless crap and add-ons like undercoating, rustproofing, dealer prep charges, etc.... This guy told me the most commission he ever made was not on one of the $100k Porche turbos he sold, but on a Nissan Stanza he sold to an old black woman he managed to convince buy something like $8000 in extra crap beyond the base price of the car. Tell the salesperson you're not interested in a trade-in when they first ask. It makes sense to keep things simple so that you don't have multiple unknown variables involved in the overall net price. Once you get the very lowest price you think is available, at that point discuss trade-in price (you can say you changed your mind or are just curious what they would offer). Note, though, that you usually can get a whole lot more money if you sell the car yourself. When my wife purchased her new Jetta, the dealer offered her only $1000 trade-in on her Toyota Camry, so we put an ad in the classifieds and sold it the next weekend for $3500. Reply Quote Top Bottom Edit

captainlynne Senior Member

Date Posted: Mar/16/2006 10:51 PM Carbuyingtips.com fightingchance.com Check out these, its all you need to know to get a great deal. Reply Quote Top Bottom Edit

spinsane Member

Date Posted: Mar/16/2006 11:40 PM I'd have to recommend the Motley's Fool book "You Have More Than You Think." The beginning of the book focuses on buying a car, with quite a few handy tips. Just another resource for ya Reply Quote Top Bottom Edit

dyn0 Senior Member 1K

Date Posted: Mar/17/2006 12:43 AM Great post! I would recommend emailing tons of dealership within about 100 miles of you. I bought 3 camrys, and they were all from diff dealerships, because I would look for the lowest price I could get. I think I probably emailed 50 dealerships, and would keep emailing them the offers I was getting and asking them to beat them. Most of the time they would use the line, "Well if you can get that price, tell me where to get it, cause I would like to buy one too". Or the line, "Make sure they are adding all the fees, because I don't believe that price". Sad part is, they were all legit. I would avoid going into the dealership until you have the deal made online.. Then when you have teh quote with ALL fees added to it (make him invoice you), then go into the dealership with a PRINT out of the invoice, and do it. If they change anything, tell them u are walking and stick with it. They will usually back down and accept what they said. I always ask for free oil changes or something over email, and say that another dealership is offering me it, usually if its a great deal they are going to turn it down, but its worth a shot. Anyway, if you have any questions, feel free to PM me. I have done this multiple times for my family! Good luck! lousygolfer said: Yes, you can usually get good deals on last year's models, but those will usually sell out by January of the new year, sometimes mid-fall even. Try shopping on the last day or two of the month. Car dealers want to clear their inventory then for at least two reasons: (a) their sales incentives (both the dealership's and the individual salesperson's commissions and bonuses) are usually based on their monthly figures; and (b) the dealership has to pay for insurance for the entire month on a car even if it is sold on the morning of the 1st day of the month, so they want to avoid that charge. You can try getting the new car price list from www.consumerreports.com which tells you the dealer's actual invoice and will let you know what dealer incentives are available that month, so you can see the dealer's real cost, not just their claimed "invoice price." However, the first report costs $12 and subsequent ones are $10 (although they have unlimited access for something like $39/mo.) Consumerreports.com also has some bargaining and shopping tips on their website. Get the best price on a particular car you want from Dealer A, then take that price to Dealer B or C and get them to beat it. Then go back to Dealer A with the new lower price and get the dealers to enter into a bidding war for your dollars. Always act levelheaded and never get really excited about any given car - you don't want to appear desparate or the salesperson won't bargain much. Be prepared to walk away from any deal and if you don't like what the salesperson is trying to spew in his/her sales pitch, don't be afraid to tell him/her to cut the crap. Tell the salesperson "My bottom line on this car is $XXXX dollars out the door with tax, title and everything. If you want to sell me this vehicle, you have two minutes to agree to that price or I'm headed to your competitor's dealership." If you're a woman, a minority or an elderly person, be on the lookout, because you probably will be stereotyped into a demographic of suckers and weak-willed persons who can be pushed and pulled into paying a lot for a car. A former client (a real dirtbag) was a car salesman and he used to tell me they would push non-white, non-male and non-elderly clients a whole lot harder into buying all sorts of useless crap and add-ons like undercoating, rustproofing, dealer prep charges, etc.... This guy told me the most commission he ever made was not on one of the $100k Porche turbos he sold, but on a Nissan Stanza he sold to an old black woman he managed to convince buy something like $8000 in extra crap beyond the base price of the car. Tell the salesperson you're not interested in a trade-in when they first ask. It makes sense to keep things simple so that you don't have multiple unknown variables involved in the overall net price. Once you get the very lowest price you think is available, at that point discuss trade-in price (you can say you changed your mind or are just curious what they would offer). Note, though, that you usually can get a whole lot more money if you sell the car yourself. When my wife purchased her new Jetta, the dealer offered her only $1000 trade-in on her Toyota Camry, so we put an ad in the classifieds and sold it the next weekend for $3500. Reply Quote Top Bottom Edit

BrianBacon New Member

Date Posted: Mar/17/2006 5:21 AM ditto what dyn0 said. I've done what he suggest here only I faxed all the dealerships within 100 miles of me of what I wanted (my preferences in color, options, ect), and what I was willing to pay for them after researching actual dealer cost online. I also marked my faxes attention fleet manager and told them to only contact me if they could meet my price. I did it this way based on what my social psychology professor at ASU taught his students (if you're reading this, THANKS). Two or three called me back, and while a vehicle with the exact options/color wasn't readily available for sale, I paid the same amount and got a few more options. Besides price, the best thing about it was I was in and out in less than 2 hours. None of the BS you usually deal with car shopping on the lot. I advise you to get your own financing (if need be) prior to purchasing the vehicle. My friend who worked at Ford Motor Credit told me dealers would call in asking for best rate available for a person and my friend might say 10%. Well that's not the rate the dealer told the client. The paperwork would often go through at 5-6-7% higher, and guess who kept the difference. Good Luck Reply Quote Top Bottom Edit

webmerch New Member

Date Posted: Mar/17/2006 11:44 AM Use www.carsdirect.com No negotition if you are happy with the price. You just pick up the car. Other than that, if you have the time, just follow the ABOVE discussions which is the best way Good luck Reply Quote Top Bottom Edit

sheetz Member

Date Posted: Mar/17/2006 12:48 PM I recommend mycar.com. It's a reverse auction where the dealerships bid against each other on the price they are willing to sell to you. The final price was far cheaper than carsdirect and I doubt I could have done better myself. 100% painless. Reply Quote Top Bottom Edit

ping898 New Member

Date Posted: Mar/17/2006 1:24 PM When it comes to buying cars, I am more of a hands on person as opposed to negotiating via the interent. If you prefer to go to a dealership or as in my case really only have 1 dealership to choose from, you'll have more negotiating power if you are willing to take a car that is already on the lot (they loose money each day it is on the lot) and if you go at the end of the month when they have to meet sales quotas. Also if you are doing a trade in ask if the dealer does loyalty discounts. I got an extra $1000 off my car cause I went VW to VW Message edited by: ping898 on 2006-03-17 13:25:33 CST Reply Quote Top Bottom Edit

OverRuled Member

Date Posted: Mar/17/2006 1:57 PM The best deal on new car that I know of is from fitzmall.com. Reply Quote Top Bottom Edit

negotiant Happy Member

Date Posted: Mar/17/2006 2:09 PM This is good post. I negotiated about 10 cars via different medium like phone, internet and even personally. 1. The first thing to keep in mind then you are not willing to buy car today at any cost, you are going there to see what you are getting for money you are willing to spend. That's way you want be unhappy if you don't get car. Usually buyer gets unhappy when they don't get car on same day and they make bad decision on very next day. This is emotional purchase and big purhcase. 2. Do your homework....KBB, edmunds and other auto related websites gives you invoice price, Treu market value and current incentives plus loan intrest rate. 3. Dealers always asks first that what you wan't to spend every month, down payment, trading or not.....they they will start negotiationg. They will increase length of your loan to decrease payment and most of minorities or new buyers will fall for that by looking at monthly payment. So be aware........ 3. Always ask to best intrest rate, usually motor corporations intrest rated are lower then bank rates if your credit is good. Even if its not good they are willing to lend you money with decent intrest rate. So make sure about intrest rate and term of the loan. 4. Always ask for freebies......like floor mats, cargo net, wheel locks, few oil changes etc.....10 free oil changes last you upto 50,000 miles. 5. Check paperwork before you sign any document. Look for additional fees like taxes, handling charges and registration. If you see any other fees then above fee and ask question. If you are not satisfied.....don't buy. 6. The main part is be ready to walk away in any case......If not happy if anything say I don't want to buy and without extending discussion walk away. There are more cars in lots and in production assembly the prospective buyers. Need any help PM me. Reply Quote Top Bottom Edit

fonzinator Senior Member

Date Posted: Mar/17/2006 2:22 PM Why a new car? Why not save a TON of money and buy a gently used car? IMO, buying new vs. used is one of the best ways to make your wallet Thin, not Fat. Reply Quote Top Bottom Edit

dkong Senior Member 6K

Date Posted: Mar/17/2006 3:44 PM Green to all those who gave great advice; in particular: lousygolfer, dyn0, BrianBacon, webmerch, and sheetz. Message edited by: dkong on 2006-03-17 15:45:06 CST Reply Quote Top Bottom Edit

clayton99 Member

Date Posted: Mar/17/2006 5:01 PM Here is a link to a previous FW thread. If you read this you will be sure to get the best deal possible on a car. I used the methods and it works. http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/messageview.php?catid=24&threadid=444610&highlight_key=y&keyword1=car Reply Quote Top Bottom Edit

SickTeddyBear Senior Member 3K

Date Posted: Mar/17/2006 7:25 PM There is one universal rule for getting the best price for anything: Know ahead of time the maximum amount you're willing to spend, and then walk away if you don't get it. The key to getting a good deal on a car is preparation. When you walk into a dealership, you already know what you want and how much you're willing to pay, and all you're doing is toying with the salesperson, like a cat plays with a mouse before he kills it. Message edited by: SickTeddyBear on 2006-03-18 22:14:25 CST Reply Quote Top Bottom Edit

darius11 Senior Member

Date Posted: Mar/18/2006 12:23 PM Yeah - I definately agree - though my wife and I had this in mind while shopping for a car this summer, and we left a trail of very ticked off salespeople. One of which told us that he was insulted by our offer and told us to leave his dealership (355 Toyota in Silver Springs, MD) and wouldn't even shake our hands. This was after being lured in by one of those rock bottom advertisements in the paper where they claim an unbelievable price on the totally stripped-down manual transmission 2x4 version, going in thinking "well, if they dropped a $22,000 sticker price to $15,000, then maybe they'll drop a $25,000 sticker down to $18,000, or somewhere around that." I wasn't surprised that it doesn't work that way. So, the key thing to do is to NOT FEAR things like that. Most of us are reluctant to be confrontational and will bargain too much - but these people aren't friends, they are opponents. They are trying to take more of your hard-earned money for the same vehicle - if you find that bottom point, you will know it. We once got down to a difference of $500 and I said we'll walk if you can't come down $500 more and two different "managers" told us to walk. I couldn't believe that they would miss out on a sale over $500, but that must have been the 0 commission point or something. Also, don't ever mention that you have a trade till the last minute, as other posters have said. That is the single greatest bit of advice - they will tell you they're giving you $4,000 for your car, but if you didn't ahve a trade, you would be paying another $750 - 1000 or so for the car. Selling outright, even if the car is messed up, will net you more dough. Just be reasonable about your asking price and point out all the things that are wrong with the car to the prospective buyer. I would unload the car as fast as possible, though, to avoid continued insurance payments, etc., or take to something like CarMax. BTW - does anyone else think this manager stuff is a load of crap? I think each salesperson takes his/her turn being "manager" for other salespeople. There is one universal rule for getting the best price for anything: Know ahead of time the maximum amount you're willing to spend, and then walk away if you don't get it. The key to getting a good deal on a car is preparation. When you walk into a dealership, you already know what you want and how much you're willing to pay, and all you're doing is toying with the saleman, like a cat plays with a mouse before he kills it. Reply Quote Top Bottom Edit

tooloud Member

Date Posted: Mar/18/2006 1:34 PM darius11 said: We once got down to a difference of $500 and I said we'll walk if you can't come down $500 more and two different "managers" told us to walk. I couldn't believe that they would miss out on a sale over $500, but that must have been the 0 commission point or something. You can't believe you'd lose the car over $500? Exactly how much do you think car dealers make on cars? I've "lost" cars over $100 before. BTW - does anyone else think this manager stuff is a load of crap? I think each salesperson takes his/her turn being "manager" for other salespeople. Of course it's a load of crap. If you even have to ask, you haven't done your homework.