Let's put the brakes on our gas habit.

Drivers of gas-guzzling SUVs should quit complaining about skyrocketing fuel prices and consider the true costs of filling up at the pump.

SPRING IN MY NEIGHBORHOOD REMINDS ME OF THE first chapters of Genesis. In the beginning our yards and lawns are a formless wasteland, but in a few short days God has created a paradise filled with forsythia, daffodils, tulips, and irises--all of them very good. And just as the creator's Sabbath begins, a small army of heavenly helpers sprout from garages and garden sheds and set about weeding, potting, planting, mulching, seeding, spraying, and sprinkling.

Even if the aphids keep us from recreating Eden in our backyards and window boxes, bending low to the overturned earth still evokes something ancient in us, reminding us of our calling to be stewards of God's creation. With our rakes, spades, shears, and trowels we are trying to take care, to say thanks, to leave something behind.

This spring, however, our concern about being good stewards seemed to evaporate like gas fumes as the nation went into a frenzy about oil prices that were popping up faster than dandelions. By the time cherry blossoms were in bloom the fare at the pump was already "as high as an elephant's eye," and looked like it would soon be "climbin' clear up to the sky." A barrel of oil, which went for less than $13 in 1998, was suddenly selling at $34, and everybody was predicting that sidling up to the pump this summer would cost us a record-breaking two bucks a gallon.

In Washington, the nightmare of American voters paying such exorbitant prices to fill up their four-wheelers and sport-utility vehicles had politicians throwing all sorts of slings and arrows at OPEC's evil--and ungrateful--empire. Pundits called upon the government to cut fuel taxes, tap into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, loosen restraints on domestic drilling, open up new reserves in Alaska, or even snuggle up to troubling oil producers like Iraq and Libya.

Candidate George W. indicated that a Bush in the White House would know how to deal with Mideast oil problems, while environmentalist Al Gore seemed strangely silent about his long-term commitment to cut America's dependence on foreign oil. In the end Bill Clinton cajoled OPEC leaders to increase the flow of crude, and--at least for a while--the specter of runaway gas prices seemed to go up in smoke.

BUT WHAT, AS PAUL HARVEY IS SO FOND OF ASKING, ABOUT "the rest of the story"? In all the ink spilled and air time spent on skyrocketing gas prices and the specter of astronomical home heating bills next winter, some crucial truths about the cost of filling up at the pump got left out in the cold.

For example, when griping about the anticipated pain of paying $2 a gallon for gas, not many news reports mentioned how low the energy costs have been in the U.S. for the past decade and a half, or that in 1998 Americans were still paying less at the pumps than our parents had a quarter of a century before. Nor was there much discussion of a fact well-known to most international travelers: that outside the U.S., consumers from Japan to Germany have long paid two to three times as much for their precious liter of petrol.

Nor did most of the reports about scary encounters at the gas pump have much to say about America's insatiable appetite for fossil fuels or our growing distaste for energy efficiency. With about 5 percent of the world's population, the U.S. continues to consume about 60 percent of the planet's natural gas, 40 percent of its coal, and 30 percent of its petroleum. Each year the average American consumes more than twice as much energy as folks in Japan or Europe.

We haven't always been such bad stewards. During the 1970s and the first half of the '80s, America made significant progress in conservation and energy efficiency. In response to OPEC embargoes and escalating energy costs, federal legislation set lower speed limits, forced Detroit to produce more fuel-efficient cars, and encouraged industry and homeowners to introduce energy-saving measures. In 1986 Americans were using 43 percent less energy per dollar of gross domestic product than they had in 1972.

In the last 15 years, however, most of this progress has been reversed; Americans are now consuming more energy per person than before the first OPEC embargo. With falling oil prices, the government and private industry have retreated from their support of conservation and energy efficiency programs. Speed limits have been raised or eliminated. Congress has refused to pressure American automakers to improve fuel-efficiency. And corporations have done less and less to improve the energy-efficiency of their operations.

Meanwhile, we are driving more and more, and doing a lot more of that driving in gas guzzlers. Since 1983 energy use for travel has increased 12 percent for each American, while our average commute has become a third longer. Our cars have more than 50 percent more horsepower, and we use public transportation less and less. Today nearly one out of every five households has three or more cars, and we currently buy about as many light trucks and SUVs as we do cars.

And the guzzling doesn't stop when we get home. Even though today's homes are better insulated than their predecessors, they are also noticeably larger and filled with all sorts of energy-consuming appliances and toys. Since the early '70s, the average size of new homes has grown by 500 square feet, and we fill these suburban chateaux with so many electronic goodies that our home energy bills grow by 5 percent every year.

STILL, THE FULL COST OF OUR FREQUENT trips to the gas pump can t be measured until we look at what our consumption of fossil fuels is doing to creation itself. In January the National Academy of Sciences' National Research Council issued a report noting that global warming is "undoubtedly real" and that the earth's surface temperature has increased about 1 degree Fahrenheit in the past century and has been rising at an accelerated rate since 1979. According to the report, most scientists today agree that the burning of fossil fuels has substantially increased the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and contributed to this warming. They also believe we can expect the levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide to double sometime in this century.

Meanwhile, a recent NASA study concluded that the annual loss of 14,000 square miles of Arctic ice cover is likely related to human-induced climate change, and reports on the increase of heavy rainfall and a longer frost-free season in the U.S. point to a probability that greenhouse gases are warming our climate.

Not everyone agrees about the long-term outcome of this warming trend. Some scientists note that effects so far have been benign or negligible. Others warn that a warming climate will produce increasingly extreme weather patterns. There is also concern about rising sea levels and the withering of summer crops.

Whatever the truth about global warming turns out to be, our trip to the gas pump may be costing us a lot more than $2 a gallon. The U.S. bishops recently noted that "the burning of fossil fuels is the dominant source of pollution that continues to contribute to a host of environmental and health problems including acid rain, urban smog, and respiratory ailments." And in a statement this spring on climate change, the bishops reminded us that as stewards of God's creation we have a duty to take care of the gifts entrusted to us, and to make sure we don't use nature in ways that harm or rob the poor or our children.

"The nations of the earth, both rich and poor, must learn to conserve what supplies they can obtain, [and] find ways of switching over to dependence on alternative sources of energy."

Spring is over now. But maybe all the flurry about high gas prices and global warming will waken our slumbering environmental consciences and remind us of our call to good stewardship. Perhaps by next spring we will have pruned back some of our consumption of fossil fuels and planted the seeds of change and conservation in our Congress and corporations.

There is still a lot we can do, and gardeners--like all good Christians--are all ways full of hope.

By PATRICK MCCORMICK, an associate professor of Christian ethics at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington.