http:\/\/tinyurl.com\/8kyx2rv<\/a><\/p>\nLike most Green initiatives, manipulating fuel efficiency standards \u201cis essentially ritualistic,\u201d Mr. Dunn notes. \u201cRather than actually confront the problem at issue, it is instead intended to instill a sense of virtue . . . while at the same time acting as a punitive measure against those opposed to Green ideology. As is true of many environmentalist programs, it has the unintended side-effect of killing large numbers of unknowing individuals.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mileage regulation was a product of the 1970s, Dunn notes. \u201cThe decade was marked by several \u2018oil shortages,\u2019 which media, government, and Green activists all attributed to resource depletion. In truth, they were triggered by Arab manipulation of oil prices in an attempt to undercut support for Israel, then amplified by U.S. government incompetence and public hysteria generated by the Greens.\u201d<\/p>\n
Today, of course, talk of \u201cfossil fuel shortages\u201d — excepting bottlenecks artificially created by foot-dragging government regulators — is the stuff of stand-up comedy.<\/p>\n
New extraction technologies and newly discovered North American reserves mean America has enough coal, oil, and natural gas to meet our needs for centuries. The Institute for Energy Research has calculated that the U.S.A., Canada and Mexico alone have 1.7 trillion barrels of recoverable oil reserves -\u2013 enough to meet current U.S. needs for another 250 years -\u2013 and another 175 years of natural gas.<\/p>\n
\u201cFuel standards are the longest-lived of an entirely futile array of attempts to address 1970s oil shortages,\u201d Dunn notes, dating from the 1975 Energy Policy and Conservation Act, which introduced the Corporate Average Fuel Economy program, or \u201cCAFE.\u201d<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, the new standards \u201chad no success in lowering fuel consumption. Quite the contrary — since it now cost less to fill the tank, people drove more.\u201d Within a few years, this \u201crebound effect\u201d doubled average fuel usage. Oil imports increased from 35 percent of consumption in 1975 to 52 percent by the year 2000.<\/p>\n
But \u201cThe new regulations did accomplish one thing,\u201d Mr. Dunn notes. \u201cThey killed drivers and passengers in large numbers. By lightening cars and removing material, auto companies were inadvertently discarding the armor that protected motorists in the event of a crash.\u201d Drivers in lightweight cars were as much as 12 times more likely to die in a crash.<\/p>\n
According to the Brookings Institution, a 500-pound weight reduction of the average car increased annual highway fatalities by 2,200 to 3,900 and serious injuries by 11,000 and 19,500 per year. USA Today found that 7,700 deaths occurred for every mile per gallon gained in fuel economy standards. Smaller cars accounted for up to 12,144 deaths in 1997 — 37 percent of all vehicle fatalities for that year. The National Academy of Sciences found that smaller, lighter vehicles \u201cprobably resulted in an additional 1,300 to 2,600 traffic fatalities in 1993.\u201d<\/p>\n
Depending on which study you choose, the CAFE standards have caused 41,600 to 124,800 additional unnecessary deaths. To that figure we can add between 352,000 and 624,000 people suffering serious injuries, including being crippled for life. In the past 30 years, \u201cFuel standards have become one of the major causes of death and misery in the United States — and one almost completely attributable to human stupidity and shortsightedness,\u201d Dunn concludes.<\/p>\n
Mind you, manufacturers won\u2019t really build many 50-miles-per-gallon trucks. It\u2019s not that they don\u2019t know how to build flimsy plastic vehicles with complicated hybrid power plants. The question is whether anyone who needs to haul or tow heavy loads will buy such a thing.<\/p>\n
Maintenance and repair costs will also be huge.<\/p>\n
While the premium on restored used trucks with pre-2010 engines will soar, what this deal really means is that manufacturers will churn out hundreds of thousands of flimsy little plastic-and-aluminum go-carts that will sit on car lots, unsold, in order to improve their \u201cfleet-wide\u201d averages.<\/p>\n
And we\u2019ll all pay for those lots full of cars no one wants, directly or indirectly, through tax rebates and cost-averaging.<\/p>\n
Why bother?<\/p>\n
To answer that question, you need to understand the true Green goal — reversing Henry Ford\u2019s affordable-transportation revolution, turning a motor vehicle back into a luxury affordable only by the rich, while the great masses of new American peons huddle in their \u201cAgenda 21\u201d concentration centers, barred from the vast Gaia-sacred bulk of the North American land mass, riding to their assigned work stations on \u201cfuel-efficient\u201d little electric trolleys.<\/p>\n
The higher costs being imposed mean six million to 11 million low-income drivers will be unable to afford new vehicles, according to the National Auto Dealers Association (NADA). They\u2019ll go looking for used cars.<\/p>\n
But guess what? Far fewer used cars are available today, thanks to the mind-boggling $3 billion \u201ccash-for-clunkers\u201d program that destroyed 690,000 perfectly good cars and trucks.<\/p>\n
And the average price of used cars and trucks has already shot up, from $8,150 in December, 2008, to $11,850, according to the NADA and the Wall Street Journal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It\u2019s wonderful what the government can accomplish with a little gentle arm-twisting, especially after it\u2019s set an example by seizing control of General Motors (rather than allowing an orderly bankruptcy, which would have allowed the outfit to escape its crippling labor contracts) and turning over part ownership of that once proud industrial giant to the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[17,18,27,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1576","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-big-brother","category-economics","category-extreme-green","category-transportation"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pWqFl-pq","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1576","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1576"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1576\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2176,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1576\/revisions\/2176"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1576"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1576"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1576"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}