Maybe conservative commentators just don't get it
Joel Schwartz is a visiting fellow for the conservative think tank the American Enterprise Institute. In a recent column titled "Environmental Activists Just Don't Get It," he circles a fleet of Hummers around personal liberty, protecting our freedom of choice from efforts to legislate reductions in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The premise, as so often stated by environmental critics, is that if automakers are required to decrease GHG, which is basically forcing them to improve fuel economy, then American consumers will lose their freedom of choice.
I doubt if the major automakers would drop such a lucrative segment as fullsize SUVs or any large vehicle if stringent fuel economy improvements were imposed. They will find a way to meet both consumer demand and environmental needs. And to fair, that technologically advanced vehicle might not come right away. There was a time when automotive enthusiasts did lose their freedom of vehicle choice in deference to solving a significant environmental problem. And yet we all survived as a country and society, and we cleaned up a major environmental mess.
I loved '60s muscle cars. I wanted a Boss 429 and an LS6 Chevelle and Hemi Road Runner in my driveway. Detroit would have kept building those cars had it not been for legislation to clean up emissions. They were literally defiant in implementing pollution controls and developing technology to produce cleaner engines.
I first moved to Los Angeles when most cars had only PCV valves and just started to get catalytic converters. I rarely saw the Hollywood sign from the South Bay, which is about 20 miles away. Now I'm surprised when I don't see it. Would I have loved to have seen how much horsepower and fun automakers could have developed in the '70s had they not been restricted by emissions regulations? Sure. Did I miss anything by not having the freedom to buy a 450-horsepower Mustang in 1980 instead of the 4-cylinder slug that I had for six years? No, there were no tears on my pillow at night. But the improvements in air quality in a region that was gagging every afternoon turned out to be spectacular and life-saving.
Detroit got fat and lazy in the '60s and didn't know how to respond quickly when society needed help. A similar scenario is developing today in that the cars are getting fat. When SUVs started becoming popular, automakers didn't look for efficient ways to build larger vehicles. They didn't have to. Just put an SUV body on a truck frame and the public will buy every one. And every year they got heavier as engineers strived for quieter ride and improved handling. As more mass was piled on by the NVH and chassis-dynamics engineers, the powertrain engineers had to come up with more horsepower and bigger engines. Today's vehicles are just too heavy.
Now is the time to give the powertrain engineers a break. They won't have to build such gas-guzzling engines if engineers in the other departments will get off their addiction to weight. Consumers may have to adjust for a few years but in the end they won't lose their choice. Guess what? 500-horsepower muscle cars did return. The new Z06 Corvette pollutes about 99 percent less than the ZL1 Corvette, gets twice the gas mileage and still runs quicker and faster. Even if automakers are dragged kicking and screaming into helping solve another environmental crisis, they will respond. And consumers will be patient if the wait results in healthier living conditions and a better vehicle.
[Source: American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Mike 10:36AM (10/04/2006)
So how do we explain the fact that Americans continue to drive gas guzzlers? According to Congressman Sherwood Boehlert (R-NY), the problem is the auto manufacturers: "The goal of fuel economy standards is to enable Americans to drive the cars they want but that the automakers aren't producing." Boehlert would have us believe that he knows more than automakers about what combination of price, performance, and features would be most attractive to prospective car buyers.
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Tony Belding 10:54AM (10/04/2006)
I think Joel Schwartz overestimates the wisdom of big car companies and underestimates their resistance to change even when it would, in fact, be in their best interest. Due to the capital-intensive and highly regulated nature of the car business, it's almost impossible for a small, innovative company to come in and shake things up. Yet, I think his argument largely holds water.
Nobody can quantify or agree on global warming, scientists are still arguing it all over the map, and we'll never know the answer until after the fact -- probably 50 years from now, maybe longer. Imposing strict regulations based on "greenhouse gas emissions" is bad policy.
US dependence on imported oil, by contrast, is a tangible strategic and economic problem right now, today. Global oil depletion (Peak Oil) is also looming -- something that is still argued about, but is less contentious and more pressing than climate change.
The catch is. . . You really need *national* leadership to address those problems. California isn't the best place to do it. Even if it was, the way they've been going about it doesn't appear to make much sense. The kind of heavy-handed mandates they've been trying to push onto car makers are like a monkey wrench thrown into the gears of the free market. Sometimes it looks like the real goal is more to spite and punish car makers, and dictate some kind of green religion to car buyers, rather than achieve real progress.
Car makers have continued to turn out gas guzzlers, and people have continued to buy them, not because they are stupid but because gasoline is plentiful and cheap. Even at $3 per gallon it was still relatively cheap. (Just ask Europeans!) To get away from petroleum fuels, the USA needs to institute a heavy tax on them. Unfortunately, the handful of political figures brave enough to suggest such a tax (like the late Paul Tsongas) have been shot down in flames. As for California. . . Even if they wanted to, they can't easily institute such a tax without forcing business away to other states. It needs to be national.
If we had this national tax, and uniformly made petroleum-based fuels more expensive, then the marketplace could adjust with a wide degree of freedom. Consumers, car companies, and other businesses could respond to those increased costs in whatever way makes sense to them -- not have their course dictated by clueless bureaucrats.
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Glenn 11:18AM (10/04/2006)
Solution: return to the United States Constitution. Get rid of the IRS and all unconstitutional taxes, and emplace import tariffs (as set-out as the legal means of taxation in the Constitution). See www.constitutionparty.com
Considering that we now import about 60% of our oil on average, and much of this oil goes into SUV and fat pickup gas tanks, a tariff would go a long way towards moving this country away from oil imports.
Imagine: NO income tax, NO IRS, but instead, gas prices might be $7 a gallon. Within months, there could be competing gasoline made from US sourced coal selling for, say $4 a gallon (in order to pay for the new mines and Fischer-Tropsch processing plants). Or maybe $3 a gallon for gasoline made from offal, sewage or garbage, see www.changingworldtech.com
How about butanol, a gasoline substitute, made from the stuff being wasted and made into ethanol now?
See www.butanol.com
All we lack is the will, and the leadership, and we can vote that into place this November, and in two more years.
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rwdmtparkingonly 11:28AM (10/04/2006)
Wow, the anti-birth control, wish homosexual acts were illegal, anti-marijuana, media content restricting conservatives think they have any moral ground to talk about freedom of choice?
You'll have to get out of people's homes before you criticize liberals for regulating what travels on public roads.
If you're the state's rights party then leave California alone, state's rights don't just apply to the state's that want to return to segregation and home school everyone until they become a drooling retardplican that covers his inability to speak properly by claiming to be speaking in tongues.
Taxing harms is generally the best way to reduce them, but in this case the effect on the poor from a gas tax would be unconscionable. It would also hurt the economy because more heavily taxed gas would squeeze out other purchases by low income people.
One of the better arguments for state’s rights is that it allows competition between the states to come up with the best legal solution, conservatives need to stop standing in the way of the California’s freedom of choice.
As for #3, more than 1/3 of the government budget goes to the military, there’s no way you could replace that with tariff money without destroying international trade. Getting rid of the IRS might sound good to conservatives, but good luck convincing them to disband the armed forces.
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Gy Wooden 1:17PM (10/04/2006)
Thank you for the words of reality instead of rants of justification of bad government and consumer decision. We do better with government mandates than with exceptions. When you realize you made a big mistake buying that Chevy Suburban, you now have to justify why you bought and “Freedom of choice” or “it's that environmentalists and their allies want to override Americans' preferences” are just walk around statements to avoid the real issues. When you talk about freedom of choice does that mean auto manufactures are free to tell the government that a Ford Explorer is a commercial truck and not personal transportation and so is exempt from safety and gas economy regulation. If the government in 1975 implement a gas guzzler tax on all noncommercial vehicles (including light duty trucks and SUV’s) and started an increase of gas tax, we would see a big difference on what is traveling on the road now. We would have been better prepared for the price of crude to jump up. If the conservative think tank thinks that wouldn’t happen just look at U.S. history from 1973 to 1999. Also conservatives, think about this; if we had spent the last three decades focusing on cars instead of trucks would there be as many non-American car companies here in an American and maybe the rest of the world would turn to us for transportation solutions. Yes, cheap gas drives a good economy for a short time but, expensive energy drives conversation and ingenuity.
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loikll 2:54PM (10/04/2006)
Are we reading the same article? Mike I was going to explain why you're argument is wrong (I've set up an autobloggreen macro for that to save me time) but then I realized you are entirely missing the point of Scwartz's article in the first place.
He is attacking the view that consumers need a blue-ribbon government panel to tell them what consumption choices will make the better off; and that business needs the panel to tell them what to sell to consumers in order to be more profitable. I totally agree with him.
He refers to a California panel that isn't merely saying new restrictions would be good for the environment at whatever cost. It's saying the new laws would substantially improve economic growth. That is in fact a pretty dubious assertion.
He refers to this NRDC claim that Detroit automakers would be more successsful if they were just smart enough to to make more fuel-efficient cars. But Detroit hates small cars becuase they lose money on them. GM has lots of crappy fuel-efficient cars that no one wants. And Ford found that people are smart enough to do the math and realize that Ford Hybrids didn't pay off.
You might make the argument that collectively society would be better off if individuals do in fact have some liberties restricted -- that's the basis of every law on the books after all. But you're not making that argument.
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John V 7:14AM (10/05/2006)
It's worth emphasizing that since 1960, Detroit has fought virtually ANY legislation that in ANY ways impacts product design. The list includes:
- mandatory seatbelts
- pollution controls (lengthy list)
- safety legislation (another lengthy list)
- airbags (worth their own entry)
- roof crush strength reqts (see Detroit News special report)
- bumper height
- bumper durability
- and there are many more
Granted some of the regulations were impractical, or written to specify technologies rather than goals and effects.
But one reason Japanese makers have been successful (in addition to the better-quality cars) is that they're not viewed as reflexively anti-everything.
Honda happened to have its CVCC engine ready in 1975 when the first major pollution controls were required--look where they are today versus GM. And so on. Volvo pioneered seatbelts and a host of other safety innovations. Toyota pioneered the hybrid. Etc. etc. etc.
I'd like anyone to name ONE technical innovation that American automakers have invented and pioneered in response to legislation ... I can't think of any, though I hope I'm wrong. Crushable steering columns, maybe?
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The other Bob 9:27AM (10/05/2006)
Uh John,
The imports are now figthing the same rgulations. Toyota is now fighting increased cafe standards and higher roof strength requirements.
Quit making this an anti-Detroit thing. If Detroit stops producing trucks, Toyota will start producing more. It's too porfitable not to.
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Jeez 2:42PM (10/05/2006)
That's it boys - force the engineers to build crappy band aids (EGR valve, Catalytic converters, air pumps, ABS based TPM systems) that will either hurt fuel ecomony to save emissions, hurt emissions to save fuel economy, or build cars nobody wants to drive (Yugos come to mind) that can do both.
Let the businesses worry about what products to sell - let the consumers worry about which products to buy -
You guys can just continue complaining... there are plenty of uber efficient cars out there, but as long as people need to haul people or need to haul stuff, the big cars will be their choice. (this coming from a guy who sold his 12 mpg fullsize truck for a 35 mpg city car - I bought what I needed and surprise! it was available for sale already without added legislation)
Yeah, the EPA sure knows more about cars than anyone else - why else would the fuel economy estimates (an EPA mandated driving cycle - mind you) be sooo accurate?!
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JOn 12:06AM (10/10/2006)
Anybody here ever heard of the "Tragedy of the Commons" paradigm? Straigh Adam Smith, for all you free-marketers, out there.
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pdxbiodiesel 4:49PM (1/23/2007)
Jeez:
The problem is that 35mpg is not high mileage. The trucks and SUVs should be getting 35mpg while the cars should be in the 60s, and "high mileage" should be around 100mpg.
I get 30mpg highway on my Jeep Liberty CRD compact SUV. I got 50mpg in my Volkswagen New Beetle TDI. (all using biodiesel by the way).
The Volkswagen TDI cars could hit 60mpg back in 1998! Why in 2006 is not every car getting 50 to 60 mpg? They do in Europe.
I know people falling all over themselves to get fuel efficient clean diesel engines that they just don't sell in the USA. Why is it going to be 2010 before the big US companies have diesel offerings in anything but big trucks? Why did Jeep only produce 20,000 Liberty CRDs over two years when they could have sold 5 times that many at least?
We have the technology NOW to have clean engines that get 50mpg in cars and 30mpg in SUVs. RIGHT NOW. If only the manufacturers would sell them.
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Tim 6:38PM (1/23/2007)
pdxbiodiesel- The VAST majority (78%) of single trips are less than 40 miles. In that range, the VOLT is all electric and burns NO gas. Single trips up to 60 miles gets you over 150MPG! Single trips of say 100 miles will get you about 100MPG. Single trips of 600 miles will get you over 50MPG. Why, the battery handles the first 40 miles with NO LIQUID FUEL! Only plug-in hybrids can do that and still won't leave you stranded if you forget to plug them in.
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