CAFE Standards and the GM Bankruptcy

Honestly, I could come up with long diatribes on each of these, but I will try to keep it brief. Just by way of information, I have been out of the loop for a while - busyness at the end of the school year coupled with numerous issues with COMCAST (they had to send out 6 different people before they figured out what the hell was wrong - a bad splitter ant the point where cable entered the house - it allowed signal in for the TV, but the bidirectional signal for internet and on demand movies was sporadic at best, so our phone lines and internet kept cutting out). Anyway, I have had a lot of ideas kicking around for the last month or so, and haven't written about any of them, so much of my thought process in the next several posts will probably be dated - but I think that the observations I will be making are both cogent and relevant, so continue, gentle reader, if you dare.

The CAFE standard proposal is just a couple of days old, and I have heard some comments by Carol Browner that confirm for me the level of commitment to ideology and idiocy in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary is going to be a hallmark of this administration, just as much (if not moreso) as it was for the last administration. In fact, based on the first hundred days, Bush Jr. looks positively like a contortionist by comparison to this rigidly inflexible and ideologically driven administration. More on this at another time (especially about Carol Browner and John Holdren - two extremists if I have ever seen them, and the level of Machievelian governance we will see in the next four years may make will make the "Bush Regime" seem like rank amatuers in terms of manipulations. If you think I am exaggerating, think of the moderate Obama campaigning vs the current governance and you can see what I am talking about. Some may have voted for him because they thought he would take these extreme steps, but most thought that he was a moderate for change. Wow, that was a long parentetical, wasn't it).

Interestingly, the CAFE standards are shifting to 30 and 39 mpg by 2016 (initial phase-in as soon as 2012, I believe, but I am not certain) - 30 for light trucks, 39 for other vehicles. What could possibly be wrong with this, you might ask. Use less gas, make cars and trucks more efficient, save the environment by lowered emissions, and besides, people want more efficient vehicles.

First - there is no global conspiracy to keep us dependant on "gas guzzling" cars. Industry is making more efficient vehicles because of consumer demand and marketing issues, not because the government imposes some ficticious standard. When the government does impose CAFE standards with arbitrary dates, companies are forced to employ tricks to get around the standards if the science is not there to meet the standards. For example, if the government in 1992 had said that this was a huge issue, and we must have the fuel standards at 39 mpg by 1996 to reduce emissions, we would not have been able to do it. Despite best intentions by the government, the technology wasn't there yet, and no amount of government standards could push the technology faster than it was developing. It took a long time to develop hybrids and market them to consumers because of the deficiencies of those vehicles, not because Americans do not care about the environment or because the evil oil companies were conspiring against the consumer and the Earth (capitalized for facetious reasons). It is actually arguable that current hybrids, while they save gas, cost a lot more in manufacturing and mining resources than conventional engines, plus the fact that the batteries that they use will have to go somewhere - battery recyling technology is not that good right now.

Another downside of the CAFE standards is that the principle way to meet them is by reducing mass of the vehicle and compromising passenger safety. While designs are getting better and better with light vehicles (crumple zones and such), mass is still an important concern with safety for a vehicle. If we really want to meet these standards, why don't we just make everyone drive glorified motorcycles - non-enclosed light vehicles with two to four wheels and light, efficient engines. We could meet and exceed these standards in a heartbeat, but, of course, safety would be drastically compromised.

This is really a political attempt to manipulate the market. Most companies will not be able to make SUVs or light trucks that meet these standards, and as a result consumers will have less choice. While some people do not think that this is a problem, I tend to worry any time the government makes a move to take away any freedom that is not exceedingly well justified. Since the science behind anthropogenic warming is sketchy at best, and the environment in America is cleaner than it has been in over a hundred years (and possibly longer) the justifications for theis power grab are weak at best. It is a base attempt to manipulate the market and force the American public to do something that it doesn't want to do, that the elite class of the Democrats have decided is good for us. If you think differently, look at the history of statements by Browner and Holdren (Assistant to the President for Energy and Climate Change and Science Advisor, respectively); both have long histories of statements and opinions requiring "de-development" of America and other first world nations - this is not some "tinfoil hat" conspiracy theory on my part, I eschew that crap with passion. Both of these advisors are profoundly anti-development and actually feel that the developed nations must shrink their economies (Browner was listed as one of the leaders of a socialist group's Commission for a Sustainable World Society, which calls for "global governance" and says rich countries must shrink their economies to address climate change - she was subsequently removed from that list by January 2009. Holdren has made numerous incorrect statements over the past 40 years with lunatic Paul Ehrlich about resource scarcity, population control, etc, including the fact that 280 million people in the US by 2040 would be far too many and be disastrous (I've paraphrased these, of course) - we are currently doing just fine with close to 310 million people here).

Well, I didn't get to discuss the GM bankruptcy, and I will in a forthcoming blog. Look for upcoming topics like the Obama Health Care plan, John Holdren, Carol Browner, proposal for injured veterans to use private health care to cover their expenses (yep -Obama wants everyone to have national health care except soldiers), and torture. And, yes, I realize that there is faulty parallelism in the previous sentence, and I know I shouldn't have started this sentence with "and".

I'll be back soon.