Asymmetrical Information

If I was allowed to be Tax King for a day, with the provision that my edicts could not be overturned, I'd immediately slap a $7 a gallon tax on gasoline and diesel, offset by a corresponding reduction in FICA taxes, weighted on the first $20,000 in wages.

It boggles my mind how many people will drive N extra miles to save M cents per gallon on gas.

Of course, there are other factors that limit how far people will choose to drive, such as time and congestion. If fuel economy standards were doubled, it's not likely that people would drive twice as much in response.

There are other problems with Easterbrook's article. First, he talks about our dependence on Persian Gulf oil. In fact, we buy relatively little oil from the Persian Gulf.

Second, the Persian Gulf nations are the world's low-cost oil producers. Anything that lowers the world price, like, for example, effective US conservation, hurts the high-price producers like Canada, without having much effect on the Persian Gulf producers.

Jeremy, the increase in fuel economy has already increased 'miles driven', as the statistics show. Here is an example: I know people who commute 40 or more miles to work, one way. They drive fuel-efficient cars, and one even admitted that if he didn't have a diesel Volkswagen that got 40 MPG, his commute would be too expensive and he'd have to consider either changing jobs, or moving. This simply illuminates how increasing MPG can lead to more miles driven.

CAFE also has killed people. One need not know the words to "In a Yugo" by heart to understand that smaller, lighter cars are less crashworthy than larger vehicles, although the design revolution of the 1990's in creating crumple-zones has mitigated some of that danger. SOME of that danger, not nearly all. Some people will choose to buy small vehicles, some large. If you have to transport children nowadays, they must ride in bulky car seats that take up more space on the seat than an adult, and that means a bigger vehicle. If transporting more than 2 children, you need either one of the really big sedans, or one of the mid sized SUV's, just to get enough seat space. You can't put anyone under 12 in the front seat near the air bag, because they can get killed by it in event of a collision, you need a big back seat or multiple "back seats".

Frankly, I detect more than a trace of envy and nanny-state-ism in the Left's worship of CAFE.

Suppose that Tesla Motors succeeds in their efforts, and a few years from now it's possible to buy a whopping big land-yacht vehicle, on either the Ford Crown Vic/Buick Park Avenue or Cadillac Escalade/ Lincoln Navigator SUV scale, that uses no gasoline whatsoever, but rather runs off of an imposing battery that's charged up at night. Will the left-wing nannies sign off on those? Or will they find some other reason for loathing big, crashworthy vehicles and championing little beer-can econoboxes anyway?

My bet is on the latter. Because it's not really about fuel efficiency, it's about control.

Gasoline prices rose slightly a year ago from $2 to $3

Er, 'slightly' in the absolute sense -- but %-wise that is 50% increase. Depending on how much you drive/commute (P*Q) and your socio-economic status that 'slight' increase can hit you pretty hard at the end of the month.

What is funny, ironic and oft-overlooked when the Left/enviro-cultists start pushing CAFE standards et al. is how the poor/less well-off will be hit hardest should the Left succeed in mandating fuel efficiency and/or a gasoline tax.

While it is indisputable that the rebound effect ends up removing a certain amount of the benefits resulting from improved efficiency, there must be some diminishing returns to this effect, as time, rather than money, becomes the primary constraint on driving (as Jeremy points out).

Also, I've often wondered if the "CAFE kills people" argument is a bit simplistic. Yes, I completely agree that one of the ways automakers have complied with the standards is to make cars lighter, I remain unconvinced that this necessarily has resulted in more traffic fatalities. Wouldn't lighter cars also have better maneuverability, shorter stopping distances (thereby avoiding accidents), and less momentum upon impact (causing less damage to other vehicles)? I'm not sure if any studies have included this analysis, but the ones that I've seen have struck me as being very ideology-driven.

That being said, CAFE standards might be the worst possible tool available if reducing gasoline consumption is the goal, being ripe with unintended negative consequences. If we truly want to do anything about it, we'll need to accept higher prices (likely via a gas tax).

And as Varangy points out, anyone supporting a gas tax needs to be honest about the massively regressive nature of such a tax (and bascially every other GHG policy).

Also, I think I'm correct in thinking that only about 10% of the American car fleet is replaced each year. It would therefore take the best part of a decade for any increases in fuel-economy standards to have any sort of impact at all.

Still, it's nothing like as bad an idea as all this ethanol nonsense.

The public (and this includes you) wants lower taxes, deficit and debt reduction, and increased government spending on education and healthcare.

We also want success in Iraq, which won't happen without more troops. On the other hand we laugh at anyone who says the word "draft" and we frown upon increased military spending.

Similarly, we want our country to be less dependent on the Middle East for oil; at the same time more and more of us are pushing into the exurbs (longer commutes) because the suburbs are getting too crowded and expensive. Meanwhile, the words "gas tax" has about as much political traction as the words "military draft."

We (the public) want everything, as long as we don't have to pay for it. For a people like us, CAFE is a very rational energy policy. By putting the burden on car companies to come up with more efficient cars it saves us the burden of having to cut down on our energy usage. CAFE standards are part of our long American tradition of relying on technology to overcome our social ills.

When you say: "it'll be EASY to cut down our fuel consumption-all Congress has to do is pass a gas tax", what do you mean when you say EASY? EASY in what way?

Anybody who supports a gas tax has to understand that they have as much political support for their idea as Chuck Hagel has for his idea of a "military draft," i.e. none at all. Americans are going to walk on Jupiter first before they're going to support a gas tax.

Also, I've often wondered if the "CAFE kills people" argument is a bit simplistic. Yes, I completely agree that one of the ways automakers have complied with the standards is to make cars lighter, I remain unconvinced that this necessarily has resulted in more traffic fatalities. Wouldn't lighter cars also have better maneuverability, shorter stopping distances (thereby avoiding accidents), and less momentum upon impact (causing less damage to other vehicles)? I'm not sure if any studies have included this analysis, but the ones that I've seen have struck me as being very ideology-driven.

Lighter weight cars tend to be smaller cars, and even with crumple zones there's just less "stuff" between the humans inside the machine and the outside world. Automakers have done more than just lighten cars to meet CAFE, throttle-body fuel injection, radial tires and other mechanical measures have made a difference as well. But ultimately, reducing weight is going to happen; the presence of the "donut" spare tire is part of that effort, as are aluminium wheels.

Modern cars do better in front and side collisions than those of previous years, to be sure. But ultimately the amount of "stuff" between the occupants and the collision matters, and CAFE means less "stuff" there.

Think I can get some marchers to chant this?

"No blood for oil! No new CAFE!"

Eh, me either.

I wonder how many ethanol plants are under construction right now? Maybe now that the housing bubble is popping (even though "Jane" doesn't deign to notice that), speculators can flip over to REITS that build ethanol plants?

Down in Mexico, the price of corn imported from the US has gone up high enough that some price controls on tortillas are being talked about. A side effect of NAFTA that no one anticipated...

Oh, absolutely Zhong Lu, which is why it is so amusing to see politicians decry foreign oil dependence (folks, can we just, for once, acknowledge that the fungibility of oil renders whether the oil comes from the Persian Gulf or Canada meaningless?), while also decrying some other politician's alleged role in the price of gasoloine being so high. Our politics are as silly, and too often MORE insipid, as the situation "comedies" we watch on television.

Gas Taxes are not easy to implement, but they are the easiest way to assuredly cut gas consumption. CAFE is, er, not. Things that would be HARDER would be alternate day driving, gas rationing, 50% of MSRP taxes annually on cars as a road permit... They would also work dramatically better than CAFE. There's a big difference between things that will work and things that are possible.

Fuck.

Very true, but increasing mpg can be accompished even easier by reducing traffic. If people just accelorated faster there'd be little traffic. Cars run most efficiently 3000-4000rpms, trucks 1500-2500. Problem is it only helps if enough people actually do it.

Easterbrook used the identical argument to argue for something else in his football column (TMQ) on ESPN-- the minimum wage increase. Yes, the old "it hasn't been raised in X years" argument.

It's also of course true that CAFE standards can increase total miles driven, which he doesn't seem to realized.

I have an idea. Let the market sort it out. Don't raise CAFE standards. All they do is kill people. Don't impose taxes on gasoline. Don't subsidize domestic ethanol. Don't tax imported ethanol or sugar.

Bush knows that if he goes the Pigow Club route, the people will hate him even more. At least with CAFE standards, they can write weasel language that accomplishes nothing at the end of the day, while ensuring that Toyota and Nissan are the only brands left in the American market.

Thanks Nick, it helps when you're a web developer by trade ;)

The new site looks great!!

Our forces in Iraq still don't have sufficient body armor. This is just shameful.

Actually, tougher gas-efficiency standards on cars will decrease our gas consumption. We're going to be commuting more, CAFE or no CAFE, and more efficient cars means less gas consumption.

The primary forces pushing people to drive more are rising house and land values in the suburbs (thus pushing people into the exurbs and into longer commutes) and a lack of reliable public transportation. Expensive gas will make people think twice about moving into the exurbs, but nobody, certainly nobody planning to live in the exurbs or suburbs, wants that.

As long as we Americans have the lust to live away from our cities, we're going to want cheap gas however much we may say otherwise. Cheap gas in America is a political fact. Seen in this light, CAFE standards are a very reasonable part of our energy policy. It forces cars to be more fuel-efficient, thus saving gas and money, at the cost of slightly increased injury rates during accidents. That's a trade-off I'm willing to make.

Letting the market sort everything out isn't a good idea either because markets mess things up too (see 1929 Stock Market crash).

Sorry to pick a nit, but Easterbrook favors the more tasteful spelling of "Gregg" as opposed to "Greg".

Zhong Lu,

Actually, tougher gas-efficiency standards on cars will decrease our gas consumption. We're going to be commuting more, CAFE or no CAFE, and more efficient cars means less gas consumption.

has not been true in the last 30 years, what makes you think it will come true now?

If the Peak Oil theory is correct, CAFE and gasoline tax policy will be moot by 2010 anyway.

Zhong Lu, from the article, average economy has increased from 13 to 22 mpg while average miles driven has increased 3 fold. Hold on while I get out my calculator... this means that the average American is consuming 77% more gas today than in 1975. What happened? I thought you said that higher efficiency would result in LESS gas?!?

Think about this analogy - when the average computer of 1990 could basically do word processing and spreadsheets, most people didn't have or need one. But now that the average computer can play games and surf the net, etc. most (all?) middle class families have one and I would guess many have 2. We increased the number of instructions per second (MIPS) of the average CPU and got more CPUs, not less.

Or said another way, increasing the MPG of a car makes each gallon of gas more valuable (because it can drive you more miles). And making things more valuable doesn't make people use less of them. Or at least not obviously so.

Nothing better illustrates the cynicism of politicians than environmental policy. Of course the most efficient way to curb the release of GHG is to reduce the consumption of carbon-based fuels, and by the way reduce our dependence on oil-producing Gulf states, by raising the price to consumers. This could be done through a carbon-consumption tax with the proceeds dedicated to eliminating or drastically reducing payroll taxes. I also like the idea of a punitive tarriff on OPEC oil so we can stick it to the Wahabi and Shiite theocrats. Anything else is bunk, hokum, and buck-passing that will just waste a lot of time and other people's money. So we have those who want to raise CAFE standards. Then, when people can use their low-mileage cars to pay less for more house in the suburbs, that problem will have to be solved by telling people where to live or by throwing money at mass-transit systems that hardly anyone uses because they are inconvenient. Or, some politicians want to solve the problem by throwing money at so-called alternative fuels. Who cares if Mexican consumers have to pay more for their tortillas, we'll just get rid of free trade, and beside those Mexicans don't vote in my district or give me huge campaign contributions; and if they try to come over here, we'll shoot them. When you look at the approaches to global warming advocated by opinion-makers and politicians, you can only conclude that they are either stupid or don't care, or maybe both.

Why are you guys picking on me all the time? I'm not toxic like those other chemicals you pump into the skys, rivers and ground water tables. All I do is supply food for the plants you eat and keep your planet warm so you don't freeze to death, albeit, I am probably the lowest concentrated "house gas", meaning if you really want to get mad at someone yell at my big brother water vapor, which is the largest concentrated greenhouse gas and is virtually inescapable when it comes to any kind of combustion driven emission.

Hook-Line-And-Sinker,
Carbon

A lot of interesting comments.

But nobody makes a comparison of the costs of the two alternatives.

What will it cost to improve fuel economy of new cars by 10% through new CAFE standards as compared to achieving the same thing through higher gasoline prices.

I would think it would be more expensive to achieve better mileage through higher gas prices. If you raise prices it will eventually lead to improved fuel economy through consumers buying more fuel efficient cars. So they will have to pay for the new technology required to improve mileage this way as well as paying the higher gasoline prices. But in the alternative of new CAFE standards they would only have to pay the cost of the new technology and would not have to pay the additional cost of higher gasoline taxes.

Of course I do not know the cost of the technology to improve mileage. It might be negative for all I know. In this case you are arguing that consumers should pay higher gas prices when we could achieve the same objective and save money in the process through CAFE standards.

Does anyone have the data to make this type of analysis?

Second, why would any rational person take a position on this issue without have an answer to the alternative cost of the different approaches?

"Anything that lowers the world price, like, for example, effective US conservation, hurts the high-price producers like Canada, without having much effect on the Persian Gulf producers."

On the contrary, the Persian Gulf oil producers are definitely effected by changes in the world price for oil. When it is high, they make huge profits (x% of which is diverted to terrorist activity). When it is low, their profits are smaller.

As long as the U.S. is a net consumer of oil, and as long as we are a target of Middle East terrorism, it is in our interest for the world price of oil to be as low as possible, regardless of the effect on North American oil producers.

Whether this low cost is due to lower consumption or higher production or a combination of the two, it's all good.

If we want to keep the WORLD price of oil low for the above reasons while simultaneously keeping the NORTH AMERICAN price high to help domestic producers, we could use tarrifs.

The Efficiency Paradox lives!

Spencer,

I think the point that is being made is that CAFE standards won't accomplish the stated goal of reducing gasoline consumption. So, in essence, the two scenarios you describe have different costs because they have different outcomes.

Damn. My reference for this is in storage somewhere. One of my engineering trade mags had a discussion of the CAFE standards vs. fatalities about two years ago. I think the number the analysis came up with was 3-5 hundred deaths a year were attributable to CAFE standards. So, yeah, it does have an effect.

Once again, you have to make ugly public policy choices. Is increasing CAFE worth some dead bodies? I don't see any compelling reason why fuel efficiency is such an unalloyed good it's worth killing people.

Of course, I could be remembering it wrong, the analysis could be crap, and all sorts of other caveats apply. The economics are still poorly thought out, as is the policy of hiding the cost by shifting it to auto companies (and consumers) by requiring them to implement the horrible idea.

A gasoline tax, while politically infeasible, is at least more honest.

Will the left-wing nannies sign off on those? Or will they find some other reason for loathing big, crashworthy vehicles and championing little beer-can econoboxes anyway?

Uh, bigger-faster electric cars will require more juice, so your electric Lamborghini will be evil compared to my electric Mini Cooper. Electricity doesn't just happen.

First question I always have for energy crusadesrs: Is the goal energy independence from Middle East producers or reduction in green house gases?

The best way to eliminate our dependence is to consume more oil as quickly as we can for our ever expanding economy. Get rid of all taxes on petroleum. As demand increases, prices will rise, world supply will dwindle. The world will run out of oil or alternatives will become economically viable without subsidies. Once Middle Eastern oil reserves are tapped out, there will be a catastrophic drop in their economies.

But wait, they will take the profits and attack us. But wait, if they attack us, our economy will crumble and they will lose all their profits from us. Then they can't attack us any more.

I'm so confused now.

"If I was allowed to be Tax King for a day, with the provision that my edicts could not be overturned, I'd immediately slap a $7 a gallon tax on gasoline and diesel, offset by a corresponding reduction in FICA taxes, weighted on the first $20,000 in wages."

So the first thing you'd do is to bankrupt the entirety of the Trucking Industry Nationwide, bringing direct sale delivery supplies, FedEx, UPS, etc. to a crashing halt. So, no groceries, no supplies, and retail stores grind to a halt shortly thereafter.

Do you have a plan for day 2? Maybe raise the Minimum Wage to $80/hour? Perhaps on day 3 you could increase unemployment to $3 million/year?

I mean if your goal is to force the economic collapse of the United States you've got a good start, but the follow through is going to be relevant.

>>> Bush knows that if he goes the Pigow Club route, the people will hate him even more.

It doesn't matter what Bush does: People will hate him more because the media want them to hate him more. Everything he does is cast in a negative, disparaging light, even if it's the thing they were shrieking for him to do 30 days ago.

The Associated Press runs this country ... and don't you forget it.

What I find so funny (in a dark humor sort of way) about talk of raising CAFÉ is that CAFÉ is a perfect example of how you can get unanticipated, unintended, and (to some) undesirable side effects. The current environmentalist boogeyman, the SUV, was created by CAFÉ. CAFÉ killed off the family station wagon, but there was still a need for that type of vehicle, so people started buying SUVs. Gas (or carbon) taxes have a similar problem. That tax revenue will be used for something, and probably for creating new programs or entitlements. So, lets say it works, and gas consumption goes down. The tax revenue from the new gas tax will also go down, but the programs that rely on that revenue will still exist, so now we will have to increase borrowing or raise some other taxes.

"If I was allowed to be Tax King for a day, with the provision that my edicts could not be overturned, I'd immediately slap a $7 a gallon tax on gasoline and diesel, offset by a corresponding reduction in FICA taxes, weighted on the first $20,000 in wages."
Which likely would immediately be followed by regicide.

"If transporting more than 2 children, you need either one of the really big sedans, or one of the mid sized SUV's, just to get enough seat space".

Shh, don't tell my Honda Accord Hybrid, which fits one car seat and two boosters in the back seat just fine. If you didn't know, it's a mid size sedan...

Jeremy Real said: If fuel economy standards were doubled, it's not likely that people would drive twice as much in response.

On the contrary, THAT is exactly what people do. When I bought a Honda Civic for fuel economy, in a short time, I was driving twice as much thinking it wasn't costing anymore than the gas guzzler I had earlier.

Human nature tricks you into thinking MORE not LESS is better. The old buzz during the Oil Embargo of 1973-74 was -- Less is more if everybody does his/her part. The problem is most people will NOT do their part. A friend who drives a Lincoln Navigator says, " I don't care what gas costs I'm going to drive what I like." He hates small SUVs and compact cars, wishes the state would ban them from the roads, "They are what cause all the trouble, if I hit one they'll stick it to me, not the small car owner for driving a car too small to see on the road."

Yancey -- when the Cafe standards were effective in the early 1980s they did a very good job of improving gasoline mileage in a period of falling real energy prices. After the goals of the CAFE standard were met and they goals remained unchanged they became ineffective and quit having an impact. But that in no way implies that raising CAFE standards did not work in the past or would not work in the future. Average fuel use per vehicle fell about 20% from a peak of 857 gallons in 1972 to a bottom of 683 gallons in 1992.

I am not making the argument either way. I just want an explanation of why everyone is automatically concluding that what appears to be by far the most expensive alternative is the best alternative.

I wrote:

"If transporting more than 2 children, you need either one of the really big sedans, or one of the mid sized SUV's, just to get enough seat space".

Robert replied:
Shh, don't tell my Honda Accord Hybrid, which fits one car seat and two boosters in the back seat just fine. If you didn't know, it's a mid size sedan...

Sorry, "booster seat" and "car seat" are not the same thing in terms of seat-space required. Try putting three full-up car seats into that Accord, and get back to me. I have put two car seats into the back of an Accord, and while there was space left between them, it wasn't enough for an adult to sit, let alone another car seat or even most booster seats. I'm afraid you moved the goalposts to midfield and then declared a touchdown.

ray_g's point about station wagons vs. SUV"s is spot on. SUV's are classified as "light trucks" and so fall into a different CAFE category. All the people I know who own these vehicles are using them as station wagons, to haul children around in, not as 4x4 off-road vehicles. It is not at all difficult to fit two car seats and a booster into the back of a Yukon, for example, and the second back seat can easily take two boosters, with a third one possible but tight. Those aren't backroad booniewagons, they are mom-mobiles.

I keep reading that ethanol only produces 2/3 the energy of gasoline. Does that mean, then, that if I get 25mpg with gasoline, I will get something less with an ethanol blend? If so, what affect will doubling or tripling ethanol use have on CAFE?

I wrote:
Will the left-wing nannies sign off on those? Or will they find some other reason for loathing big, crashworthy vehicles and championing little beer-can econoboxes anyway?

Vincent replied:
Uh, bigger-faster electric cars will require more juice, so your electric Lamborghini will be evil compared to my electric Mini Cooper. Electricity doesn't just happen.

But hold on now, suppose I charge up my Tesla 2-seater, or hypothetical Cadillac Land Barge batteries from my huge home battery bank, that was charged up by my gigantic and extremely expensive array of high-efficiency SunPower solar cells?

Wouldn't my supremely evil Land Yacht be transformed into a big, bright, Green machine?

Spencer,

The stated goal of new CAFE standards is to reduce gasoline consumption in total, not gallons consumed/vehicle. Even with the CAFE standards of the seventies and eighties, gasoline consumption/capita increased in the USA.

If the goal is to decreas gasoline consumption, then a tax on gasoline is the proper policy measure. If the revenues of the tax are returned to the citizenry on a per capita basis, it need not be much of an expense to society as a whole. In addition, a tax on gasoline gives incentives to conserve in ways other than buying more fuel efficient vehicles.

Now, opposing the tax because it is a tax is a perfectly valid position to take. I simply oppose CAFE standards because they are either redundant or useless, depending on what other policy prescriptions are enacted.

No, it's still evil. Well, maybe if you grimace the whole time - can't do good without suffering.

No, it's still evil.

$100K on solar cells alone ain't enough? Dang...

Well, maybe if you grimace the whole time - can't do good without suffering.

Hmm? Botox injections could give one a permanent grimace, without having to work the facial muscles...hmmm...

"Supremely Evil Land Yacht"

If I was allowed to be Ford King for a day, with the provision that my edicts could not be overturned, I'd immediately make that the new name of the Expedition.

ellipsis wrote:
"If you have to transport children nowadays, they must ride in bulky car seats that..."

I replied:
"Shh, don't tell my Honda Accord Hybrid, which fits one car seat and two boosters in the back seat just fine..."

ellipsis replied:
"I'm afraid you moved the goalposts to midfield and then declared a touchdown"

To which I respond:
I merely defined the playing field better ;-) Two of my children need booster seats, and the third needs a child seat. I passed on the Civic and Prius because they were too small, for me and the seating arrangement I needed. I'm pretty sure you don't need a SUV or large sedan to hold 3 car seats in the back, but I check more than 3. Or, get a car where you can turn off the front air bag, or purchase one without the air bag. People often buy what they want, not what they need.

A huge gas tax won't be implemented, because it will hoze poorer groups for a cause that is primarily a concern of the rich. If you're working poor, global warming is not a high priority, but getting to work definitely is a concern. And it's unlikely that you can easily move closer to work or buy a new car since both cost big money. Riding the bus is even harder; anyone try to get anywhere on a bus or train outside of a few big - and expensive - cities?

Many poor people work several (crappy) jobs, and often work temp jobs, so they don't know from month to month where their work will be. A huge increase in transportation costs will hurt them hardest, and is the whole point of the "Pigovian" concept: poorer people are supposedly more "receptive" to "market signals" since they have less money.

ellipsis wrote: "Down in Mexico, the price of corn imported from the US has gone up high enough that some price controls on tortillas are being talked about."

In other words: More third world children are going to die of malnutrition so that Americans can drive their ethanol-fueled SUV's to Blockbuster instead of walking or biking??? That's pathetic, if it's true! Do you happen to have a citation handy?

People often buy what they want, not what they need.

Because it's their life and their money.

What a bunch of control freaks we've got here. Not content with running their own lives, they want to run everybody else's.

I drive a Honda Civic because I would rather spend my money on something else. I wouldn't dream of telling you what to drive, or where to live, or what to eat. The last time I looked at the Constitution, the Federal Government didn't have that right either.

Funny how gas prices stopped falling when the President announced his plan to increase the size of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Doing so on a regular basis might keep prices high enough to encourage conservation (or at least sustain present levels) while also maintaining the SPR as a sizable buffer against supply disruptions. Or not. But it seems like it would be a good idea.

Creech,

Yes. . . I took this from Popular Mechanics, they have a great article on alt fuels.

Ethanol is ethyl alcohol, often referred to as grain alcohol; E85 is a blend of 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline. A gallon of E85 has an energy content of about 80,000 BTU, compared to gasoline's 124,800 BTU. So about 1.56 gal. of E85 takes you as far as 1 gal. of gas.

The full article is:
http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/earth/2690341.html?page=1

MarkD edgily writes:
"What a bunch of control freaks we've got here."

My original point was that you don't need an SUV or large sedan for 3 kids in car seats. My definition of child seats included booster seats, as I think only children use them. The comment of purchasing what they want, not what they need was an observation, not a "do it this way or you're an idiot". I can personally make that comment one as my wife has one of those SUV's for our kids. She didn't want anything else. I could of stopped her, but it's her choice.

You looking for control 'cause you want to see it?

The other point which CAFE advocates seem to overlook is the elasticity of demand for new cars. CAFE Standards only affect new vehicles. Many consumers in the US have revealed a preference for large vehicles. If CAFE standards significantly increase the cost of new large vehicles, we can expect to see existing (normally less fuel efficient and more polluting) vehicles remain on the road even longer than they already do.

An increase in fuel taxes on the other hand is applied to all vehicles and will have the effect of increasing a consumer's incentive to replace an old, inefficient vehicle with a new, efficient vehicle. This seems to me to be the more likely of the two approaches to actually achieve the desired objective (decreased emissions of pollutants).

Additionally, I'd like to see the increase in fuel taxes applied to aviation fuels as well. If people want to fly in private jets, I'd like them to feel at least as much pain as car drivers.

Regards,
Neil

Summary: Upholstered roller skates and/or upholstered battery packs on wheels will not meet everyone's needs, no less their wants. Headroom, legroom, cargo volume and hauling capacity are all elements of a vehicle's utility.

SUVs are less damaged in collisions but cause more damage themselves. Thus, the small-car drivers pay for the supposedly increased safety of SUVs.

"Supposedly" because the decreased collision damage is mostly offset by rollover danger.

I'm willing to guess that an SUV/SUV collision is about as dangerous as a small-car/small-car collision, as well, so it could be a zero-sum arms race.

ellipsis wrote:

[Think I can get some marchers to chant this?

"No blood for oil! No new CAFE!"

Eh, me either.}

This brings up one of my pet peeves (yes, it's a long list...). *No* blood for oil means no oil, because people regularly get hurt and killed in producing and delivering oil - as well as any other product. Farming is dangerous. How about "No blood for food"?

Unless they really mean something else, but I can't think what that would be.

BTW, welcome back, Winterspeak. I haven't seen anyone call you 'Jane' yet.

"In other words: More third world children are going to die of malnutrition so that Americans can drive their ethanol-fueled SUV's to Blockbuster instead of walking or biking??? "

No, it means more childrean will have less tortillas. I don't know if expensive corn torillas equals starving children...what were they planning on putting in the tortilla?

no: Corn tortillas fried with lard, some beans, a little jalapeno for flavor, and you've got sufficient protein, calories, and B-vitamins. All that's missing for a balanced diet is something leafy, green, and fresh - and those who know how can grow the beans and peppers in a small garden and find edible greens among the weeds they have to pull. Growing enough corn takes a considerably larger garden.

I grew two rows of corn in my small garden and had corn coming out my ears for 2+ months. Like I was making 10 ears of corn a day sorta thing.

I can't imagine that a mexican who depends on the corn could do worse.

In any case, they certainly won't be starving to death if they eat the beans and other stuff they would have mixed in otherwise. Saying they are dying so we can drive to blockbuster is overstating it just a tiny weenie bit...

Think about this analogy - when the average computer of 1990 could basically do word processing and spreadsheets, most people didn't have or need one. But now that the average computer can play games and surf the net, etc. most (all?) middle class families have one and I would guess many have 2. We increased the number of instructions per second (MIPS) of the average CPU and got more CPUs, not less.

Not really a good analogy, even by the standards of analogies. The average computer in 1990 cost something like $1300. The average computer now, though being orders of magnitude faster, costs a bit under half of that in real terms (and slightly less if inflaction is accounted for). Also, the modern computer -- though offering far more features -- has benefited enormously from miniaturization in ways that vehicles never can.

As demand increases, prices will rise, world supply will dwindle. The world will run out of oil or alternatives will become economically viable without subsidies.

No, not at all: as price goes up, it becomes feasible to attempt exotic techniques to refurbish depleted wells and extract oil from tar sand or oil-shale. There is an enormous volume of known oil trapped in existing deposits (it is common to obtain as little as half of the oil available in a reserve because the remainder clings to the surfaces of the porous rock structures in which it collected, and it is not especially easy to "wring out the sponge").

Oil is the most convenient high-density energy storage medium known to man, and an enormous infrastructure is in place for it in a way that simply does not exist for other technologies at this time. The world is a very long way from 'running out of oil'.

Even at the recent $50-90/barrel prices, consumers started checking their consumption patterns (small sag in truck/large SUV sales, small increase in car sales), and substantial R&D efforts were made to break oil loose from sand and shale deposits. Shell, IIRC, was experimenting in Colorado with a method that could turn oil shale productive by drawing the oil out of the rock underground (instead of the known method of strip-mining and crushing), with sights on a full-commerical-production cost in the range of $30/barrel and only slightly more economic impact than standard well production techniques.

One of the single greatest hindrances to these discussions is that oil is a fantastically complex and risky industry, while a majority of consumers only understand the periodic media reports on the current commodity price, balanced against whatever digits they saw on the corner gas station's sign on the way home from work.

Shh, don't tell my Honda Accord Hybrid, which fits one car seat and two boosters in the back seat just fine. If you didn't know, it's a mid size sedan...

The present-generation Accord is the victim of size bloat just like most other long-running nameplates in the industry, and is on the cusp of becoming a large car. At any rate, the Accord's interior space can be met or exceeded, and the Accord Hybrid's nominal fuel economy stats nearly matched, by many of the midsize hybrid SUVs on the market.

no (can we call you "Doctor"?), the Mexican government used to subsidize small farming communes called "ejidos", a cultural artifact from the 1910 revolution, but in the wake of NAFTA that declined. Economies of scale in the US make producing corn cheaper than in much of rural Mexico, so the smallholders down south have been undercut in price for several years now. Some of them moved to Mexican cities, others moved farther and generally north.

Mexico is increasingly urbanized (Google up the size of the capital), and thus poor people increasingly don't have any dirt to grow stuff in any more. All that said, I doubt that ethanol plants in the US are going to lead to starvation in Mexico.

No, it means more childrean will have less tortillas. I don't know if expensive corn torillas equals starving children...what were they planning on putting in the tortilla?

Double-check your knowledge of the Mexican food economy. The corn tortilla is a staple carbohydrate in like fashion as a loaf of bread is in the US, except that the average Mexican citizen hits the starting line with a much lower income than the average US citizen.

Huh, this posting seems to have vaporized. Looks like "Jane" has some kind of bot in place watching for excessive links. In that case, rather than post the links to CNN, NPR and the AP, I'll post my google search on tortilla prices in Mexico:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=mexico+%22tortilla+prices%22+2007&btnG=Google+Search

Cultural observation: some Mexican nationals I worked with a year ago one day were remembering the days gone by, when their mothers made all the tortillas from masa, right in the kitchen before each meal. One young woman from a large border city observed that while the store-bought ones never tasted as good as her mother's hand-made ones, her mother had taken a job for money and no longer had the time to make dozens of tortillas.

Regarding auto safety, here's an interesting article by Malcolm Gladwell which says that if you look at death rates, you find that large, heavy vehicles are less safe than smaller vehicles, because they're less maneuverable: it's harder to avoid a collision in the first place. Most of us think that S.U.V.s are much safer than sports cars. If you asked the young parents of America whether they would rather strap their infant child in the back seat of the TrailBlazer or the passenger seat of the Boxster, they would choose the TrailBlazer. We feel that way because in the TrailBlazer our chances of surviving a collision with a hypothetical tractor-trailer in the other lane are greater than they are in the Porsche. What we forget, though, is that in the TrailBlazer you're also much more likely to hit the tractor-trailer because you can't get out of the way in time.

Yancey-- I do not remember that CAFE was designed to actually reduce gas consumption, but I'll take your word for it.But that does not negate my point that to reduce gas consumption requires new auto technology. Sure, in the short run a bunch of other things can temper this, but you can not get away from this. So by ignoring CAFE and only relying on price you are forcing consumers to pay twice for lower gas consumption. Once for the gas tax and second for the new technology to cut consumption.

So why is this a superior solution?

spencer,

One obvious benefit of a higher gas tax as opposed to higher CAFE standards is that the tax actually targets what we are trying to reduce — consumption — whereas CAFE doesn't. The tax encourages consumers to replace their old gas-guzzlers with more efficient new cars; it discourages long commutes; it props up mass transit and carpooling; &c. CAFE does none of these things. Indeed, to the extent it raises the price of new cars, it probably keeps old guzzling/polluting vehicles on the road longer than they would otherwise be driven, though I doubt the effect is that large.

Besides, if the revenues generated by a higher gas tax were dedicated to R&D on more efficient vehicle technology, the consumer would in effect be paying only once — or, rather, in two installments, but for the same benefit.

I think the Flinstone car should be required in the sunny climes, get your exercise and save the planet at the same time.

---

Use less gas - how are we going to fund the roads?

Russil - there's a strong psychological component to that; we all assume that I'm a good enough driver to avoid a wreck, it's the crazy/drunk/teenage idiot I have to protect myself from. This is a prominent feeling in women with young children, who therefore demand a large vehicle.

Alas, it doesn't explain why my wife wants one. She likes trucks because she can see better. I hate the *^%%^ things because I like driving a car.

FWIW, Honda is better at producing small cars with real headroom and legroom than any other manufacturer I'm familiar with. (You might destroy any hint of back-seat legroom doing so, but how often do you really have adults in the back seat?)

Similarly, we want our country to be less dependent on the Middle East for oil; at the same time more and more of us are pushing into the exurbs (longer commutes) because the suburbs are getting too crowded and expensive.

I don't want the US to be less dependent on Middle Eastern oil. I'm still not clear why such a reduction in dependency is desirable. There's only one example of (the '73 oil embargo) when this caused the country serious problems. The various other times we've experienced uncomfortable price hikes in petroleum have been a function of oil's relative scarcity. I'd just as soon we drink all the easy-to-get Middle Eastern crude and save our own in the ground where its safe. Anyway, these days I trust the Saudis for dependability more than I trust the Venezuelans or Nigerians.

Someone tell me what the definition of a "gas guzzler" is nowadays, in terms of MPG. I know what the big Suburban barges get, and I know what smaller vehicles get, but I'm just curious to see what people think is "guzzling gas", frankly

imposing gas taxes like that likely would destroy significant poorish sectors of the US economy. why can you so easily start a maid/lawn/handyman service in the US? because you can drive around to work, carting tools in people. that doesn't work so well on the subway. similarly, if you lose your job, drive to another one, regardless of whether there's public transportation nearby (contrary to popular belief, there's not perfect public transport in europe, people just learn to make do with what they get to). people seem quick to ignore the seemingly ginormous benefits to our economy from cheap gas -- not just lower cost directly, but the extraordinary freedom it provides for people to work, travel, etc. helping out with FICA or even EITC is unlikely to wholly or even nearly make up for what a gas tax would do.

I'm just curious to see what people think is "guzzling gas", frankly

*samples hook, shrugs, bites* Hmm...how about any modern vehicle, used primarily for passenger commuting, that cannot maintain 20mpg or higher on the open highway?

If any modern vehicle cannot maintain 20mpg or higher on the highway, then IMO it is either (1) a cargo vehicle for which there is no convenient alternative; (2) badly out of tune; or (3) being used for a purpose other than what it was really designed for.

(And yes, I know that (3) indicts some of the recent V8-powered passenger cars. I don't doubt they are buckets of fun to drive, but they clearly represent an inefficient brute-force approach to achieving power.)

Josh, ellipsis I apologize for not being clear. What I meant was that CAFE standards had a positive impact on lowering gas consumption; i.e. we would be consuming more gas now if there was no CAFE standards in the first place.

CAFE standards have a desirable effect that I am quite happy with. They encourage auto manufacturers to discount the small cars that I am inclined to buy in order to sell more of the large, low mileage vehicles with a higher profit margin.

By encouraging auto makers to sell their small cars at very close to the cost of manufacture, CAFE standards mean that more people at the lower end of the economic spectrum will be buying new cars than might otherwise happen. Newer cars are for the most part safer, less polluting and get better gas mileage.

Since I am not the one paying for these benefits, I am all in favor of more of it. Was it Milton Friedman who said something to the effect that when you rob Peter to pay Paul you will usually have the enthusiastic support of Paul?

anony-mouse - no, not bait, I'm genuinely curious. "Gas guzzler" is a semantically loaded term that gets tossed around a bit, that never seems to get any definition tagged to it. Which is kind of odd, if you thinkg about it, because unlike "freedom" or "security" we can assign a numerical value to the term. Thanks for responding.

Creech & BladeDoc

Close but not quite.

Ethanol only has 70 percent of the energy that the same volume of gasoline contains. If your car was 100% efficient at turning that energy into miles per gallon, then you would get 30% worse mileage with ethanol.

But your car is not 100% efficient. If it were, you would be getting well over 100 miles per gallon. The energy from the fuel goes other places. For example, your car has a radiator to get rid of the heat that some of the energy in your fuel is turned into instead of motion. Ethanol burns cooler so less of its energy is turned into heat.

In the average Flex Fuel vehicle using E85, mileage drops by approximately 10% to 15%. However horsepower goes up by about 10%. In the last year or so, there have been Flex Fuel engines built which suffer no decrease in mileage when using the 85% ethanol fuel. SAAB actually makes a car that gets better mileage with E85 because it uses a turbocharger to increase the compression which takes advantage of the fact that E85 has an octane rating of 105.

If gas stations selling E85 become ubiquitous, we might start seeing vehicles that are designed for E85 only. By designing for the 105 octane fuel, it is possible to increase the compression ratio pretty significantly compared to an engine that has to run on 87 octane unleaded regular. With a high compression ratio engine, you can get a lot more horsepower out of a much smaller engine. With a smaller, lighter engine you get better mileage in a kind of virtuous spiral. Alternatively, you can keep the same size engine and get neck snapping acceleration type horsepower.

Many commenters are claiming that taxing gasoline is the more expensive solution.

Surely if we take the economy as a whole, it is actually free. Repeal another tax, preferably one that disincentivises good behaviour (ie working, especially among the poor) and we could actually see a net positive effect on economic activity. Stick in an escalator, so the amount taken rises over time, and you have an incentive system to change behaviour, without too big a punishment.

It also allows people to make their own judgments over how to spend their own money.

I'm all for more horsepower and lighter engines, unfortunately people are too stupid to use them effectively. We have plenty of horsepower now, but people don't bother using it. If they did there'd be little traffic in most communities and every car would get much better MPG.

I'm all for more horsepower and lighter engines, unfortunately people are too stupid to use them effectively. We have plenty of horsepower now, but people don't bother using it. If they did there'd be little traffic in most communities and every car would get much better MPG.

Hey Hey, (Hmm, that was fun.)

Gas Taxes are not easy to implement

No,

Absolutely; poor people always have plenty of disposable income. So, naturally, price increased in food never affect them at all.

Yeah, right.

Raising the CAFE standards might not be as easy as it appears.

How is California doing with the Zero Emission vehicle standard? IIRC that mandated that a certain percentage of vehicles sold in California be Zero Emission and set a date for compliance. That date keeps having to be pushed back because no one can meet the standards.

The King Canute principle.

Additionally, if anyone wants to increase the mileage, all they have to do is outlaw automatic transmissions. Vehicles with manual transmission get 3-5% better gas mileage.

But that would inconvenience actual voters instead of impersonal businesses so that will never happen.

Let me see, if I understand this correctly, we should raise the price to the consumer in order to reduce demand. Could someone explain to me why this reduced demand is expected for gas prices but ignored for labor prices (read "minimum wage law")?

"Suppose that Tesla Motors succeeds in their efforts, and a few years from now it's possible to buy a whopping big land-yacht vehicle, on either the Ford Crown Vic/Buick Park Avenue or Cadillac Escalade/ Lincoln Navigator SUV scale, that uses no gasoline whatsoever, but rather runs off of an imposing battery that's charged up at night. Will the left-wing nannies sign off on those? "

Electric cars are significantly worse for the environment. Generating electricity, transmitting it over wires and using it to charge car batteries is about 30% as efficient as burning fuel in an internal combustion engine. The only environmental reasons for using electric cars are:
1) A clean source of electric power is available - wind, hydro, solar, nuclear, or hopefully someday, fusion.
2) Locallized pollution problems significantly outweigh regional and global ones. For example, a distant and remote coal plant produces pollution that does not significantly affect humans, powering cars in a congested metropolis with a smog problem. Still, even here the net carbon dioxide generation is over 3 times as much.

Njori wrote:

Please provide a cite for this. Electrical generation stations are external combustion engines, and thus rather easy to make more efficient than the Carnot engine within a motor vehicle. The ideal Carnot engine is capable of, if I recall my basic physics, 25% efficiency under ideal conditions -- and no motor vehicle even comes close to ideal conditions. Line losses from electrical generation are a function of current in the line (I**2 * R) and can be reduced by going to higher voltages, see the extremely high voltage DC inter-tie that runs from the Dalles in Oregon to Southern California for an example.

The only environmental reasons for using electric cars are:
1) A clean source of electric power is available - wind, hydro, solar, nuclear, or hopefully someday, fusion.

Ah, but hydro kills fish, nuclear is inherently eeeevil for megayears, etc. and etc. according to the Greens.

2) Locallized pollution problems significantly outweigh regional and global ones. For example, a distant and remote coal plant produces pollution that does not significantly affect humans, powering cars in a congested metropolis with a smog problem.

That is the justification, so far as I can tell, for the People's Republik of Kalifornia's mandate for "zero pollution" vehicles.

Still, even here the net carbon dioxide generation is over 3 times as much.

This assumes, of course, that CO2 is a pollutant, which is still unproven.

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All right, now the bots have found this page, it's time to get serious. How about some real, true, genuine cafe' standards?

* All red tablecloths shall be of cloth, except in really cheap places where they may be made of something waterproof.

* All wine bottles on tables with candles stuck in them shall be from an appropriate country. No cheap California grape-juice "Big Cab" bottles in Le Bistro Cafe, please.

* All waiters and waitresses shall be taught proper technique by randomly selected French bistro servers. On the one hand, this means that loudmouthed, obnoxious jerks may never be served(*), but on the other hand people with proper manners will receive quick, polite and quiet service.

* As part of "quick, polite, quiet service" no waiter or waitress shall ever approach a customer who has just taken a bite of food and ask "IS EVERYTHING TASTING OK? EVERYTHING ALL RIGHT? CAN I GET YOU ANYTHING?" in a loud and demanding voice. They shall, rather, actually observe the customers with some care and discern when there is a problem to be solved or need to be met.

* Televisions in cafes, if present at all, shall be located only in remote corners or in the "bar" section. Thus it shall be possible to eat without being bathed with CNN.

* American style cafes shall always have a counter, with at least four (4) seats that a customer can sit on. These seats shall spin, in order that small children can have something to do while waiting for the food order to arrive.

* American style cafes with a jukebox shall always include at least one Hank Williams song, one Elvis song, and three (3) swing tunes (Ellington/Glen Miller/etc.) for any adults that may be present.

* American style cafes shall always include on the menu the BLT, the fried egg sandwich, the grilled cheese and egg salad.

Please join me in my quest for cafe standards...

(*) This rule may have to be modified in New York City, in order to avoid mass starvation.