Wake Up And Smell The CAFE

From IBD:
Posted 5/8/2006

Energy Policy: Ten states are suing to strengthen fuel economy standards for SUVs and light trucks — standards that have failed to reduce our dependence on foreign oil and have killed more Americans than terrorism.

Led by California and the state's Attorney General Bill Lockyer, the states contending the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration failed to conduct a thorough examination of the environmental benefits of these standards and the impact of gasoline consumption on climate change.

"The federal agency has ignored the law that requires integrating environmental impacts into their standard setting," Lockyer said in an interview with The Associated Press.

But what Lockyer and the others ignore is that the air has been getting cleaner with the existing standards and that the warming and cooling of Earth predates the Industrial Revolution.

As we have noted, in the 2006 edition of the "Index of Leading Environmental Indicators," which Stephen Hayward has been compiling since the early 1990s, emissions of carbon monoxide from all sources fell by 14.8% in just the four years ended in 2004.

Nitrogen oxides were down 15.7%, sulfur dioxide 6.7% and volatile organic compounds 11.2%.
As for even more fuel-efficient vehicles helping the environment, the EPA estimates that car and light truck emissions make up only 1.5% of man-generated greenhouse gas emissions. And a National Academy of Sciences report says that while higher CAFE standards may cut emissions, the gains would be lost through emissions from the new technologies needed to build more efficient vehicles.

And, ironically, it is those very standards, forcing the downsizing of vehicle weights and forcing people into lighter and less safe cars, that sparked the move to heavier vehicles in the first place. The operative word in SUV is "utility."

While the impact of mankind and the vehicles we drive on the climate is uncertain (the major greenhouse gas is in fact water vapor), the results of stiffer fuel-economy standards — which have gained new currency as pump prices rise — have not been in doubt.

First, fuel economy standards are and have been a conservation failure. Rather than cutting our dependence on foreign oil, the share of imported oil consumed in the U.S. has risen from 35% in 1974 to about 58% today.

When people get more miles per gallon, they tend to drive more miles. Duh.

Efforts to increase fuel economy through lighter, smaller, and less safe vehicles have cost more American lives than terrorism. A USA Today study using data from the NHTSA and the Institute for Highway Safety, found that through 1998, weight and size reductions undertaken by auto makers to meet fuel efficiency standards had resulted in 46,000 deaths. That's roughly the population of Pocatello, Idaho, lives wiped out by misguided federal regulations.

A 2001 National Research Council study linked CAFE standards to 2,000 additional deaths on the highway annually. Raising the standards to 40 mpg from the current 27.5 mpg, as proposed by environmental groups and congressional Democrats, could raise to 5,000 the number of CAFE-related casualties, according to a Competitive Enterprise Institute study.


Even Ralph Nader, a CAFE advocate, knew that lighter cars were more dangerous for their occupants. Remember the Volkswagen Beetle? In the 1972 book, "Small On Safety," the Nader-founded Center for Auto Safety called the fuel-efficient "bug" a death trap because of its diminutive size.