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1993-09-11
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BOGUS RATIONALE FOR CAFE STANDARDS
by Thomas Sowell
[1993 Jan 13]
For years now, the morally anointed have been denouncing large
automobiles as ``gas guzzlers,'' and the new Clinton administration is
already committed to legislating higher gas mileage requirements. The
most likely consequence of all this is that our cars will go from being
gas guzzlers to being blood guzzlers.
There is no mystery about how to get higher gas mileage: Build smaller
and lighter cars. And there is no mystery as to what happens when people
have automobile accidents in lighter cars: They are more likely to be
killed or severely injured.
MILEAGE MANIA MEANS TRADING BLOOD FOR OIL.
The insurance industry keeps careful tabs on who gets injured driving
what kinds of cars, because they have millions of dollars at stake.
According to data from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, if
you drive one of those big old gas guzzlers like a Cadillac or a Lincoln
Town Car, your chances of filing an insurance claim for severe injury is
about half of what it is for a driver of a Ford Escort or Hyundai Excel.
It's not a question of a particular manufacturer or a particular brand.
Large luxury cars in general -- gas guzzlers -- average less than half
the severe injury claims of small two-door automobiles.
With all the money you save on gas by driving smaller and lighter cars,
you may be able to afford a longer stay in the hospital or a fancier
funeral.
None of this should be a surprise to anyone. Life is one tradeoff after
another. There are no ``solutions,'' even though intellectuals and
politicians are constantly talking as if there were.
HOW DESPERATE ARE WE TO SAVE GASOLINE -- AND WHY?
The world's known petroleum reserves today are double what they were in
1969. This may sound strange to those who have been listening to the
political hysteria of the past 20 years, but political panic-mongers are
rarely concerned about the facts.
With petroleum, as with many other natural resources, someone is always
saying our current supply will run out in 10 years or 20 years, or
whatever other number they can concoct. At best, these numbers reflect
nothing more than sheer ignorance of economics.
At worst, they represent a calculated attempt to start a political
stampede toward whatever policy is being promoted, for whatever ulterior
purpose.
Natural resources do not jump up out of the ground and announce where
they are located. Looking costs money. Drilling a lot of dry holes
before you finally strike oil costs money.
Seldom will it make sense economically to invest so many millions of
dollars in looking for petroleum (or other natural resources) as to
locate enough to last for centuries. Depending on the interest rate
charged on investment funds, as well as other factors, it may only pay
to locate enough of the resource to last 15 or 20 years.
That is why panic-mongers are able to go around crying that we will be
``running out'' of some vital natural resource in 15 or 20 years.
As the inventory of a natural resource declines, then it pays to go look
for some more, so that the point at which we are theoretically going to
``run out'' always recedes before us, like the horizon. We certainly did
not have a 50-year supply of known petroleum reserves 50 years ago nor
was there any reason why we should have.
The problem is not simply that rhetoric is more popular than economics.
The more fundamental problem is that there are whole classes of people
whose whole role in life, and whose whole egos, depend on their seeming
to be so much wiser, nobler, more ``concerned,'' and more
``compassionate'' than the rest of us.
They are forever looking for ways for the government to impose their
superior wisdom and virtue on the benighted masses. For years, they have
been carrying on a veritable war against the automobile, which
represents the very antithesis of their vision of how the world should
be run.
Instead of having the anointed looking down from on high, and directing
the antlike creatures below as to how they should travel to and fro, we
have a world where ordinary Americans can decide when, where, and how to
go, without so much as a ``by your leave'' to their betters in
Washington, in the academy or in the media.
The automobile has been one of the great liberating forces of the 20th
century. It did more to reduce severe overcrowding, common in cities a
century ago, than all the hand-wringing reformers put together. But, as
the automobile enabled people to spread out into the suburbs, to get
some elbow room, the anointed began to wring their hands over what they
chose to call ``urban sprawl.''
People living cramped lives, whether in cities or in rural areas, had
whole new vistas opened up to them by the automobile. Many could now
travel around the country, some visiting the vacation resorts or
national parks once reserved for the elite.
The elite in fact began to complain about places that were now
``spoiled'' because the great unwashed intruded into their exclusive
little worlds. Environmentalism owes much to this elite resentment, and
the rhetoric of trying to ``save'' this or ``preserve'' that is often
nothing more than selfishness posing as nobility.
Automobiles are no more exempt from tradeoffs than anything else in this
world. This has allowed the anointed to seize upon every cost that goes
with the benefits of the automobile, whether pollution, safety problems,
or the ``using up'' of petroleum.
Everything that uses fuel produces pollution, including the horses that
automobiles replaced. Horse manure was a far more serious pollution
problem in American cities than the exhaust fumes of today Indeed, the
horse manure of today's anointed is still polluting the political
process -- and may well succeed in turning gas guzzlers into blood
guzzlers.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
DIRTY-CAR TUNEUPS BEAT OXY-FUELS BY A MILE
By Donald H. Stedman
[``Mr. Stedman is a professor of chemistry at the University of
Denver.'']
[From The Wall Street Journal, 6 February 1990, p. A18:3]
[677 words]
Every version of the Clean Air Act currently under consideration
contains provisions for mandating alternative fuels. Cost
estimates reviewed for the Business Roundtable vary from $40
million to several billion dollars a year. Millions of dollars
are already being spent in Arizona, Colorado, Nevada and New
Mexico on the mandated use of oxygenated fuels in vehicles as a
carbon-monoxide control measure.
Yet the same Environmental Protection Agency database used to
justify the use of oxygenated fuels shows there's a better way to
control carbon-monoxide emissions: Tuning up the small minority
of dirty cars is twice as effective as -- and much cheaper and
simpler than -- using oxygenated fuels in the entire fleet.
At the University of Denver, we have analyzed the studies of
oxygenated fuel on vehicle emissions in the EPA's national
database and other available studies. The results from all the
studies are striking in their similarity.
Half the carbon monoxide emitted comes from about 10% of the
vehicles tested. Half the improvement in the per-mile carbon
monoxide emissions attributed to fuel oxygenation comes from the
same 10% of the fleet. If those few vehicles were to have their
emissions systems tuned up to equal the average of the rest of
the fleet, the emissions improvement would be almost twice as
large as the improvement obtained by using oxygenated fuel for
the entire fleet.
As an example, an EPA study of 84 vehicles published last year
showed that 80 of them emitted a total of 397 pounds of carbon
monoxide, while the dirtiest four emitted 338 pounds [85.1% of
the base]. When the entire fleet was put on oxygenated fuel, the
total emissions reduction was 203 pounds [57.9% of the base],
with the dirty four contributing 107 pounds of that improvement
[52.7% of the improvement]. If the dirty four were tuned to emit
the average of the rest of the fleet, they would emit a total of
20 pounds -- a 318-pound reduction in emissions [80.1% of the
base] from the tuning up of only four vehicles.
Oxygenated fuels cost more, decrease gas mileage and damage
vehicle components. Therefore, a program that identifies and
mandates tuneups for just the gross polluters offers major
advantages.
An actual tuneup study of 10 vehicles was conducted in 1978 by
the Colorado Department of Health. The 10 vehicles studied
emitted a total of 434 pounds of carbon monoxide using normal
gasoline. When 10% ethanol fuels were used, the fleet emission
dropped to 335 pounds [77.2% of the base]. When only the two
dirtiest cars were tuned up, and the normal fuel retained, the
fleet emissions dropped to 294 pounds [67.7% of base].
Last summer, there was a widely publicized rally for
methanol-fueled vehicles. It was not widely publicized that the
emissions from those specially prepared vehicles were essentially
identical to those from any new vehicle that could have been
bought from any showroom nationwide. It is tempting to suggest
that the problem is not dirty fuels, but dirty cars.
The University of Denver has developed a remote sensing device
that can detect carbon-monoxide emissions from passing vehicles.
The results of more than 250,000 measurements agree with the
statistics from the government testing programs; namely, half the
carbon monoxide emitted comes from about 10% of the vehicles. We
now have a tool to identify the gross polluters very cheaply.
All the data show conclusively that a good tuneup of a few
vehicles would be more cost effective than mandating less
efficient fuels for everyone.
Mandated oxygenated-fuel programs cost an estimated $500 per ton
of carbon monoxide removed, according to a study prepared for the
EPA last September by RCG/Hagler, Bailly Inc. (The estimate does
not include a realistic assessment of gas mileage lost, or any
estimate of vehicle-parts damage.) Annual exhaust-pipe inspection
and maintenance programs cost more than $780 per ton of carbon
monoxide removed. A program based on remote sensing and tuneups
of the gross polluters would cost, I estimate, only $40 per ton.
All the studies point to the cost-benefit advantages of this
program. The choice is clear.