The United States is last in the industrialized world when it comes to auto fuel efficiency. In this country of innovation, we're behind Japan, Europe, China, Australia and Canada.

This matters, a lot. For every gallon of gas burned, a car produces about 20 pounds of carbon dioxide. Rising concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere contribute to global warming. The United States is the world's largest emitter of carbon dioxide.

So if Americans want to be serious about reducing carbon dioxide emissions, we need to get serious about improving the fuel efficiency of our cars.

While fuel economy standards in the United States have remained flat, the rest of the industrialized world has taken action. In Japan, cars are required to get more than 45 miles per gallon. In Europe, more than 40 mpg. China, Australia and Canada, more than 30 miles mpg.

The United States? For cars, 27.5 mpg (unchanged since 1985) and for light trucks (pickups, minivans and sport utility vehicles), 22.2 mpg. Last March, the Bush administration ordered a paltry mileage increase by 2010 in the light truck standard, from 22.2 mpg to 23.5 mpg.

No wonder Ford, General Motors and Chrysler suffer in competition with Toyota and Honda. A 2006 Honda Civic Hybrid gets nearly 50 mpg; a 2006 Ford Focus (one of Detroit's best for fuel efficiency) gets 29 mpg.

Bush signed an executive order Monday directing agencies to work together on a proposal to achieve a 20 percent reduction in gasoline use by 2017. This would be the equivalent of a 34 mpg standard. Yet Bush evaded questions about whether new fuel efficiency standards would actually emerge from this work.

This is too little, too late.

No wonder California and 11 other states went to court to get the new 23.5 mpg standard for pickups, minivans and SUVs overturned. They want the Bush administration, in the words of California Attorney General Jerry Brown, to "junk the token 1-mile-per- gallon increase in fuel efficiency stand-ards and propose something real."

This is fitting. California has a long record of leading the nation in regulating auto emissions. And in 2002, California lawmakers passed a law phasing in new emissions standards — producing the equivalent of 43.4 mpg by 2016 (which would still be less stringent than European standards, set at the equivalent of more than 50 mpg by 2012). Unfortunately, California's law is tied up in court with an auto industry lawsuit.

The least that Bush and Congress could do is get behind solutions that would narrow the gap between U.S. and European standards. Under the Bush proposal, we'd still be dead last in the industrialized world a decade from now.