World of Education/World of Education.iso/world_e/envfacts.zip/CARS.TXT

Text File | 1993-09-11 | 11KB | 211 lines

                   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.

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           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.