Wake up and smell the weak CAFE standards. A federal appeals court in San Francisco told the Bush administration on Thursday to stop blowing smoke up our collective tailpipe and get serious about reducing pollution from SUV’s, pickup trucks and vans.The administration’s proposed regulations uphold the double standard Detroit’s been banking on, calling for greater fuel efficiency from passenger cars than light trucks and giving SUV’s a total pass. Seriously. The standards, lame as they are, don’t even apply to trucks weighing more than 8,500 pounds, like, say, the Hummer H2.The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which sets the standards, has never regulated Hummers and their carbon spewing cousins, claiming that more testing needs to be done first. The court rejected this excuse and ordered the NHTSA to develop fuel standards for these larger trucks or come up with a better reason not to. Jerry Brown, the California Attorney General Formerly Known as Governor Moonbeam, called the ruling “a stunning rebuke to the Bush administration and its failed energy policy,” adding that “the idea of raising vehicle efficiency 1 mile per gallon is pathetic and shocking.” But Dave McCurdy, president and chief executive of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, warned that “any further changes to the program would only delay the progress that manufacturers have made toward increasing fleet-wide fuel economy.” In other words, requiring American automakers to manufacture more fuel-efficient cars will only delay the manufacture of more fuel-efficient cars. When it comes to combating climate change, these guys really know how to stall.