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Sad CAFE
One of the most emailed from the NY Times (sub), a long article about bipartisan failures to raise CAFE standards:
In 1990, Richard H. Bryan, a Nevada Democrat, teamed up in the Senate with Slade Gorton, Republican of Washington, and proposed lifting fuel standards again over the next decade, with a goal of 40 m.p.g. for cars. Amid furious opposition from Detroit, liberal Democrats from automaking states, like Carl Levin of Michigan, joined conservative Republicans like Jesse Helms of North Carolina, who died on Friday, to block new CAFE standards. “It was one of the most frustrating issues in my Senate career,” says Mr. Gorton, who left the Senate in 2001.
Dan Becker, then a lobbyist for the Sierra Club, still remembers his shock when he saw Mr. Levin and Mr. Helms, diametrically opposed on most issues, walk amiably together onto the Senate floor to cast their votes. “This wasn’t East-West, right-left, or North-South,” he says. “But had we passed that bill, we’d be using three million barrels less oil a day now.”
That amount may not sound like much, given total global consumption of 85 million barrels a day, but it’s more than OPEC’s spare capacity now.
Mr. Levin didn’t return calls for comment. But Representative John D. Dingell, the powerful Democrat from Detroit who chairs the House Energy and Commerce Committee, argues — as he did more than a decade ago — that tightening CAFE standards unfairly penalizes domestic automakers while rewarding foreign rivals who make more small cars.
Mr. Dingell, who has defended the automakers fiercely during his 52 years on Capitol Hill, decided to support the stronger CAFE standards last year. But he does not apologize for his longtime stance. “The American auto industry has sold the cars people wanted,” he says. “You’re going to blame the auto industry for that or the American consumer? He likes it sitting in his driveway, he likes it big, he likes it safe.”
Once again, TPM recognized me right up until I tried to post this article, whereupon I had to leave this page and login on the main page.
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Comments (13)
Sometimes capitalists have to be regulated to save them from themselves. We have oil company and airline CEOs calling for re-regulating their markets.
Meanwhile GM's market cap is now $7 billion dollars, that's half of Avon cosmetics. Nice job, Detroit!
July 7, 2008 11:19 AM | Reply | Permalink
True, and if the public had committed to their buying habits learned in the 70s, GM would have kept to those market forces.
If you want to blame the capitalists, fine. Know that they will only sell what the market dictates. And the American public is the market.
We are the market, the fault is among ourselves. Yes, I know you don't have an SUV -- neither do I. I know you are stuck with the bills that others have spent -- as I do as well. I am speaking about the majority of Americans.
Who also are distrustful of educated people.
July 7, 2008 1:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
True, and if the public had committed to their buying habits learned in the 70s, GM would have kept to those market forces.
GM and other US car manufacturers started their downward spiral by building crappy econoboxes like the Chevette, Pinto and the aptly named "Gremlin" from the late unlamented American Motors. They never built them to last. They only built them as starter cars for customers to move up and out of. Japanese cars rusted as well but you could put a couple hundred thousand miles on them before the doors literally fell off as they did on my roommate's Gremlin.
If you want to blame the capitalists, fine. Know that they will only sell what the market dictates. And the American public is the market.
You give short shrift to the power of marketing and advertising. For decades US car companies assured us SUVs were safer, roomier and all importantly status symbols. Now they have to downsize these vehicles and they call the new smallers ones "crossovers". Piss off your neighbor with the new Ford Edge and call it what it is, a "station wagon".
Remember when Ford introduced the big Expedition?
That's when they started describing the Explorer as a "compact SUV". There's nothing compact about the Explorer. It gets 14city/20hwy.
We are the market, the fault is among ourselves. Yes, I know you don't have an SUV -- neither do I. I know you are stuck with the bills that others have spent -- as I do as well. I am speaking about the majority of Americans.
The majority of Americans don't have the time or inclination to research the consequences of peak oil and the ramifications of buying one size vehicle over another. All they knew is Ford, Toyota, and Chevy would sell them a big vehicle for about the same $$ as a smaller vehicle. When gas prices were steady and affordable they bit. Once again, those big vehicles are what the car companies chose to build more of and market because they made more money off them.
July 7, 2008 4:58 PM | Reply | Permalink
If you want to blame the capitalists, fine. Know that they will only sell what the market dictates. And the American public is the market.
July 7, 2008 6:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
Oh for an edit function!!!! Obviously after the first sentence, the rest of the block quote is mine, not markg8's.
July 7, 2008 6:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
Donal,
Thanks for making this point. Jody Powell was interviewed the other day about Carters' "Moral Equivalent of War" speech. Apparently the real people irritated by the speech were all inside the beltway -- on both sides of the aisle.
I dislike the notion that one party is particularly better than the other with regards to energy policy -- because there is little evidence for it. Especially since we have no energy policy. As we saw this spring, both Hillary and McCain would willingly pander stupid ideas of gas tax holidays to get a vote.
We need real leadership on this issue and only Jimmy Carty has given it to us in the nation's history. We need more of it, and not just in the White House.
July 7, 2008 1:37 PM | Reply | Permalink
Rec'd! I was reading this with much disgust. We are 30 years behind just because of short-sightedness in the U.S. government and a few special interest. I remember some where in the article that someone said high gas prices is/are the only way Americans will learn to conserve and change lifestyles.
July 7, 2008 4:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
I don't think this is quite accurate. The American market didn't go to the auto manufacturers and tell them they wanted behemoth SUVs that guzzled gas as if there were no tomorrow.
Yes, once those SUVs were available, Americans who were inclined that way saw no disadvantage in buying these vehicles, because the gasoline expenses were not prohibitive for the middle class. And, as happens with some pretty inexplicable things, SUVs not only were a kind of fad, they became a status symbol. But if the car makers hadn't created these monsters, the millions of current SUV drivers wouldn't have been beating down the plants' doors demanding them. You can't want what doesn't exist.
Actually, back in the days of gas lines and the memory of gas lines, it was a status symbol to have bragging rights that your car got better mileage than the next guy's. It was an indication of savvy consumership, and often the energy-consumption aspect didn't really enter into it.
Americans aren't born wanting huge, gas-guzzling vehicles. But we may well be born with a need to belong, and belonging in this society is often achieved through embracing fads, trends, and status symbols. And, as with diabetes, some people are more susceptible to this than others.
Back in the late 1980s, when I was living in SoCal going to grad school, I saw crazy water waste that I hadn't experienced up in the Bay Area, most it going toward having lush, green lawns and pristine driveways. I opined to anyone who would listen that all it would take to make Southern Californians to conserve water would be to put a spread in the LA Times Style section, showing that brown lawns and dusty driveways were the new status symbols. It could have been called "brown chic."
July 7, 2008 4:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
First, unless there are neurological conditions, psychological reactions are not comparable to psychological reactions (like diabetes, unless you are linking it to obesity).
Second, if Americans are basically sheep, then all the more reason for discouraging people from voting because they have given up the right to express their independent thought.
Either we value the average American's opinion, or we discount it because of their need to belong. We can't have it both ways.
July 7, 2008 6:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
A member of one of our local school boards advocated putting a green roof on of the grade schools. This is a grass roof. The locals hooted until he explained he could get an $80,000 grant to do it, it'd be an excellent learning environment/teaching tool for kids and they wouldn't have to turn their school's soccer fields back into a bog to satisfy EPA requirements.
He's now running for County Preserve Commission. If he wins he'll be the only commissioner to ever have studied forestry on the commission unlike all the Republican hacks we have now.
July 7, 2008 5:07 PM | Reply | Permalink
That's great. It isn't what it could be, but we are finally seeing some movement towards sustainable building.
July 7, 2008 5:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
Anyone do an engineering study to see if the roof could (a) hold the additional weight (dirt is heavy) and (b) see if the structural integrity would allow moisture up on the roof without leaking?
I ask because should the roof collapse, this isn't going to look very bright -- and people tend not to do due diligence on "bandwagon-style" (e.g. green) projects.
(Cost of roof repair and alternative facilities until the roof is repaired may well be more than $80K)
July 7, 2008 6:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
Good point. We just had Tremco give an in-office seminar on green roofs, and they definitely must be engineered for the load and the moisture.
July 7, 2008 7:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
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