This BBC story talks about evangelical Christian Americans who say we need to care for the earth better, but also some hard-nosed neo-cons who see gas guzzlers as bad for U.S. national security.

An excerpt:

The former director of the CIA, James Woolsey, for example, drives a Toyota Prius, the Japanese hybrid that's powered by a combination of a battery and a conventional petrol engine.

Reliance on oil from the Middle East is dangerous, say critics

Earlier in the spring, 31 national security experts, some of whom had advised President Reagan and the first George Bush, wrote to the current President Bush calling for government action to promote vehicles that use alternatives to burning gasoline.

Frank Gaffney who runs the conservative Center for Security Policy told the BBC that his concern was that oil was imported from areas on which the United States did not want to depend:

"Most of the places we import from have regimes that are at best unstable and at worst openly hostile to the United States," he said.

"What are we doing giving all this money to the people who are trying to kill us?"

No longer treason

The conventional stance of American industry since global warming first surfaced as a concern has been to deny any connection between it and the burning of oil.

Car and oil companies have been reluctant to admit any scientific link (in contrast, for example, to British Petroleum, which accepted the link and tried to re-brand itself as an "energy company" seeking to husband existing stocks of oil and find new non-carbon sources of energy).

There are signs now that some in the American car industry at least feel they may be missing a trick.

General Motors, with its commitment to cars that devour gasoline, is now rethinking, and looking for ways to get into the market for cleaner cars that the Japanese are starting to dominate.