Heck, Mr. President - Why don't we see if we can make things worse...

How exactly is this making things worse?

Every automaker that wants to sell cars in the 13 states that follow the CA regulations must operate under the same regulations. No one automaker is being singled out. So, what is your supposition here - that domestic automakers cannot meet this but the Japanese can? Fine, then I'll take back that automaker bailout money right now - that's my tax dollars that those automakers are using, they damn well better be using that to design cleaner cars.

The fact of the matter is that there's plenty of passenger car designs out there that can meet the standard, and there HAVE been in the past - like the GM EV1. The fact of the matter is that those designs haven't been profitable because they are radically different, and thus do not have the economies of manufacturing scale to be able to crank out parts a mile a minute - which would make the parts cheap. The fact of the matter is that a technological switch to electric vehicles will not happen until the EV is manufactured in the same quantities as the gasoline vehicle - thus putting it's purchase price comparable to gas vehicles.

The situation is the same as that with computer storage medium. Today there's storage medium - optical - that for the same volume can store 100 times that of magnetic media. But the computer business isn't switching to it because mag media has such a history that it can be manufactured more cheaply - because the assembly lines already exist, the infrastructure already exists. It doesen't matter that the techniques to cram data onto mag media are unbelievably esoteric while the techniques to cram data onto optical are basic.

If optical and mag media had to start at the same time from square one, optical would win hands down. But we have mag media due to industry inertia.

The auto industry has huge industry inertia. Obviously the CEO's and such of the current automakers would rather go with gasoline designs they have now that are proven sellers, that they can predict in advance the profit on. So in an open market they are going to do what is best for them - not what is best for the country.

The situation is the same as that of Social Security. Every citizen who has paid

20-odd years of payroll taxes is expecting to see that money back and will fight to the death any attempt to abolish SS - even though it's bankrupting the US - because it's in their own self-interest to do it, NOT in the country's interest. The country's interest would be to not have SS at all and to have something else instead of it. That was what Bush was driving at with his privatization of SS initative. But of course that got shot down.

The situation is also the same with digital TV. There is a huge expensive hump to get consumers over to transition from analog to digital. That is why the industry would never have voluntarily done it, and why the transition had to be forced by the federal government. But once we get over that hump in the long run it will be cheaper, and much better for the country.

Granted, your still burning fuel to create electricity. But, your doing it in a stationary power plant and you can extract every bit of usable heat from the fuel, instead of dumping half your fuel energy out the radiator like a car does. You can also sequester the CO2 from a power plant by running it into an algae field which uses solar energy and the CO2 from the power plant which can then create fuel. That isn't practical in a vehicle.

Ted

The key thing that made the American economy so great (or, at least, so big....) is the fact that it is a large single market.

Setting up internal trade barriers is truly idiotic. When I heard about this plan a few days ago (yes, even reported in the UK) my first thought was that it was daft.

The EU is painfully working its way to a true single market by the harmonisation of, among other things, technical standards. Of course there is also mutual recognition of (old) national standards to accelerate the process of free movements of goods, but it would be very foolish to create an uncoordinated plethora of new standards.

DAS

To send an e-mail directly replace "spam" with "schmetterling"

Yes. Much better to agree on a single standard for the acceptable degree of curvature of a cucumber. :))

Hah! I heard the news story a couple of months ago about the small farmer whose entire harvest of - what was it - avacado's? - was destroyed because some of them were 2 mm under the minimum required size for sale for human consumption according to the EU specs.?

Laws like that are ridiculous whether coming from some wannabe centralized world government or a single state. The problem with centralized stuff like the EU and the UN is that everything becomes one size fits all, and there's just too much to be gained by corruption by otherwise meaningless, counterproductive, and plain damaging to the human condition laws (similar to communism). It's bad enough in single countries as we are finding out for the 10,000th time.

A lot of the stuff you read about the EU is nonsense. British papers are full of it as they love to bash "Brussels" without actually comprehending it.

The questions of definitions are tricky, as quality has to be defined. Easy to mock when not thinking about it.

DAS

To send an e-mail directly replace "spam" with "schmetterling"

I don't accept that an entire harvest of whatever vegetable it was has to be destroyed (they refused to allow it to be used for anything - bureaucrats had to make a point). Aren't there at least some starving people somewhere that could have used them. Besides - if I wanted to buy some smallish samples of whatever it was, I should have the right to do so. I find this kind of crap more than grossly absurd.

Not to worry, Dori. It is clear that the U.S. is now on an accelerated schedule to the same fate as Europe.

Nothing to stop the manufacturers from building to the highest spec......

I'd assume they could have used it as animal feed - or does the EU have specs on that too?

Dori, Bill doesen't have any excuse for this and should know better, but you are perhaps unaware that ever since the 60's that CA has had differing emissions requirements for automobiles than the rest of the United States. In short, if you wanted to sell cars in the US you either built your entire model to be California

-compliant, or you did what most manufacturers did, and made a special CA version of your model for sale in CA.

So the idea that the American economy is a large single market has never been true for automobiles. And the fact is that although a lot of car guys sneered at GM for making exactly the same vehicle and badging some of them Chevy and some Buick, selling the different badges in different geographical markets, this is a strategy that worked - and it is further evidence that the American market isn't homogeneous.

What is going on now in the US is that as more and more states adopt the CA emissions requirements, automakers will be forced to eventually adopt those as the standard for ALL models sold in ALL states, even if that state had not adopted the standard.

Now, as for Bill, for shame, shame!!!! Let me remind you Bill that it is YOUR political party - the Republicans - who are die-hard states-rights activists. Weak and small central government, remember? Well, I guess it's just more hypocracy - your all for states rights when a state wants to turn the clock backwards on abortion, but when a state wants to set tigher emissions standards, boy watch how quick you and your ilk will run crying to the feds to override that state. That is what your old bud the Chimp did when he was President after all - override the CA States Rights on this issue. Accellerated schedule to the same fate as Europe, my ass!

Ted

You missed where I said "(they refused to allow it to be used for anything - bureaucrats had to make a point)". The news story I heard specifically mentioned that they would not allow it to be diverted even to animal feed. Not that it couldn't have from a practical point. The point of that was that they had to send the message that they were in charge, not that any real good would come of that spec. That's what bureaucrats do - operate to exercise their power for the sake of that power. Acting for the common good is not in the equation.

And Californians paid for that in higher costs - like they do with everything.

My philosophy would be that if California elected legislators that exacted their own standards on cars that California then deserved what it got in the form of paying more for their cars. Pure and simple. Californian's have a way of shooting themselves in their collective foot and then blaming everyone else.

There are too many examples of that to list them all, but I remember I think it was in the early or mid 90's, California passed some ridiculous restrictions on auto insurance companies - things that would make staying in business impossible.

All of the insurance companies immediately pulled their business out of California. Then California bitched about that. Imagine that - people refusing to be forced to do business in a state where it would be impossible to not go broke - oh those bastard insurance companies!!

And the answer to your future response to that is: Then let some wise businessman start a new insurance company to operate in California under those regs. There's a reason that no businessman - wise or otherwise would have done so.

You're suggesting that those states *require* vehicles be made special to looser standards, and therefore their people pay *more* for specially built cars? Why would they do that. But they are *free* (key word) to do that if they so desired as California was free to do so for what it wanted, and its people ended up paying for it in the price of things in many areas.

Yeah - let's make it illegal for people to clear brush from around their houses to protect mother earth - oh I'm sorry - Mother Earth, and then ask for sympathy and aid from everyone else when their houses burn down because the fires spread like - umm - wildfire.

But - you are right - the rest of the country is becoming like California and Europe. Like Dr. Phil would say "How's that working for ya? What were you thinking!?" Only then it will be too late.

I am aware that California had its own car standards for a long time.

I wanted to write more but it's late and I have to go for a loooong drive tomorrow, starting early. And it's snowed. And nobody has winter tyres in southern England, me included...

DAS

To send an e-mail directly replace "spam" with "schmetterling"

And for us, the Superbowl is starting. :)

Hmmm... The US has been doing something like this since 1971 at least:

"...When fruit are found that fail to meet these requirements the receiver has the option to recondition the fruit so that it does meet requirements or the fruit is destroyed..."

Well keep in mind that CA got this special consideration because they started emissions regulations BEFORE the federal government did. Is your position that there should be no emissions regulations whatsoever, federal or otherwise?

CA is somewhat of a special case, though. When you can land in LAX and get off the plane and look straight up and the sky is orange, as I have done, you realize what real air pollution is.

Your thinking prop 103 that regulated insurance rates and cut all of them

20%

That never happened. Many large insurance companies experienced losses for a few years after that - but CA then passed prop 213 which prohibited uninsured drivers from suing for medical, etc. as a result of accidents - this greatly encouraged the purchase of auto insurance, which put those companies back in the black.

None of this happened and your story is a rediculous distortion of what actually happened.

The current fight nowadays is over offering quake insurance - insurance companies all over the country are dropping this coverage in states that have fault lines. Some of this is due to regulations that prohibit them from discriminating against brick and mortar buildings or buildings built before

1960.

The economies of scale dictate that if enough states vote this in that the incremental cost of adding the emissions controls will be very very small - because all vehicles will be doing it.

Also, there are health costs the society has to bear as a result of increased air pollution. Sure, auto owners may save a few bucks if the auto companies are allowed to produce more polluting vehicles - they end up paying far more than they save years later in medical bills and increased medical insurance premiums as a result of dealing with more problems as a result of increased pollution.

You also forget how elastic the car market really is. If new vehicle costs are increased as a result of more emissions regulations, then fewer will be sold, as a result used vehicle resale prices will go up since fewer newer vehicles will be passing into the used market - and as a result used vehicles will be more likely to be repaired to get more years of use out of them, rather than being scrapped.

I've been in and out of wrecking yards enough to see that the vast, vast majority of vehicles are scrapped due to engine or transmission problems, NOT due to crashes or worn out bodies. If fewer new cars are put into the pipeline, then in order to maintain the same population of cars on the road, then fewer used cars can be scrapped out - and ultimately the ones in the pipeline will need to be kept on the road longer. This results in increased economic activity among repair businesses and decreased economic activity among the new car automakers, so the net result is merely that your shifting jobs from one segment of the market to another.

The only downside is your making vehicles more expensive to all segments of the population - so the very poorest people in the population are ultimately unable to afford a car. However, from a public policy viewpoint this is a good thing - because the poorest car owners are least likely to purchase vehicle insurance, which causes all of the rest of us to pay for them when they get into accidents as a result of increases in our own insurance premiums.

Ted

No - I already said that they should be allowed, by states rights to impose whatever requirements they want, but that they should be prepared to bear the costs as well as the benefits of whatever peculiar legislation they impose on themselves.

Yep - that is an argument against one-size-fits-all legislation.

Yes it did. We may be talking about two separate events. For a short while, CA was in a crisis because people could not get insurance.

No argument from me - I'm an engineer. But again - if individual states want to put additional requirements on themselves, that is between their citizens and their elected legislators.

Yep.

Oh really? I think more than a few people would disagree with you on that.

But the greenies are conflicted on that. They want to get older cars off the road. Just as they oppose windmills because they kill birds.

See

As long as a new transfer of wealth scheme is not cooked up to "fix" the problem.

Heh. There's many people with a vested interest in seeing large numbers of car sales who claim the market is inelastic. They have nothing to say in the face of all the automakers having the worst sales years in history. Even Lloyd fell flat when he claimed last week that Toyota stock was a good investment since it paid dividends (Toyota declared a loss and is not paying dividends now)

There are also many fools who claimed a few years ago that you would have to pry their SUV from their cold dead fingers. Those have nothing to say as well as they tool around town in their econobox rice grinders and their SUV is sitting with

500 of it's brethern on the local used car lot.

This actually started up under your old friend George Bush.

George Bush Senior, that is. In the early 90's. See here:

You have to keep in mind what is really going on with the stimulus package. Both the House and Senate members are basically tailoring the package into 2 completely different bills, by tacking all manner of pork on to the bill. This allows a congressman to go back to their constituents and claim that they voted for a special-interest project that is dear to the constituents hearts. However, as you know only a unified bill may be sent to the President for signature. When congress passes differing versions of a bill the two versions are sent to a joint conference committee that works out a unified text. In the case of the stimulus package they will simply strip away everything that isn't in the other house's version.

The cash for clunkers package wasn't included in the House version of the bill so even if it does make it in to the Senate version, the committe will simply strip it out of the package sent to the President for signature. That allows whatever congressman that proposed this to go back to their constituents and claim that they voted for the clunker idea, so they must be a green congressman. In the meantime pay no attention to the fact that it was never passed - the congressman has his talking point that can be used in advertising, etc.

Obviously, anyone who is serious about the environment understands that the emissions savings by retiring a SUV early and replacing it with an economy car does not make up for the emissions caused by manufacturing a new car. But, your average dumb bunny doesen't, and so would probably believe the hype that this program helps the environment.

I liked what the Sierra Club had to say about that.

As for the windmill thing, it is true that older wind farms kill some birds. But we are talking really old designs here. Todays mega-windmills (the 1.5mW designs, particularly) have huge blades that turn slow (they couldn't turn fast) and are geared up to turn the generator fast. Any bird can fly around these. The older windmills had small blades that didn't have much gearing on the generator and those turned fast.

Ted