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Townhall...
A
Government That Kills
By John Stossel
8/10/2011
President
Obama has declared that auto
companies’ fleets must average 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025, almost
double the
current 27.5. Standing at his side when he made the announcement were
executives from the Big Three automakers.
The
New York Times reported: “It is an
extraordinary shift in the relationship between the companies and
Washington.
But a lot has happened in the last four years, notably the $80 billion
federal
bailout of General Motors, Chrysler and scores of their suppliers,
which
removed any itch for a politically charged battle from the carmakers.”
Right.
They’re happy to agree to
stupid rules, since they are now dependent on government favors.
Obama
said that under his new rule,
“everyone wins. Consumers pay less for fuel, the economy as a whole
runs more
efficiently.”
Sounds
impressive, but he didn’t
mention the costs. The Center for Automotive Research says the new
standard
will raise the price of cars by about $7,000. You’d need to save a lot
on fuel
to break even.
But
that’s not the worst of it. The
new rules will kill people.
Sam
Kazman of the Competitive
Enterprise Institute explained this to me. The MPG standard “has been
killing
people for the last 30 years,” Kazman said.
How
can that be?
“It
forces cars to be ... made smaller
and lighter. ... They are simply worse in just about every type of auto
collision.”
The
National Highway Traffic Safety
Administration actually backs Kazman up. It estimates that smaller cars
are
responsible for an additional 2,000 deaths each year.
Imagine
that -- a government safety
agency promotes a rule that kills people.
“Think
about the minute risks that
agencies like Environmental Protection Agency go into a tizzy about.
... If any
private product had a death toll one fraction of what the
miles-per-gallon
rules cost, that product would have been yanked off the market years
ago.”
Do
we at least end up using less
gasoline and saving money?
No,
given the increased upfront cost
of the car. “It is not clear that it saves people money,” Kazman said.
“If
these technologies in fact save people money, you don’t need a
government law
to force them down people’s throats.”
Right.
We’re not stupid.
Bob
Deans of the Natural Resources
Defense Council, one of America’s biggest environmental groups, said
that
Kazman and I are wrong.
“Cars
like the Chevy Cruise -- 42
miles per gallon -- get top marks on safety. The Ford Focus, more than
40 miles
per gallon -- top marks in safety. We’re getting safer cars, and
they’re not
coming at the expense of fuel efficiency.”
Deans
added: “By increasing that gas
mileage for our auto fleet, we can cut our oil consumption in this
country by 4
million barrels per day by 2030. That would almost wipe out our OPEC
purchases
daily. It will make our country stronger.”
But
we use oil for lots of things. If
we cut gasoline use by a third, unlikely as that would be, we’d still
only
reduce our fossil fuel use by 7 percent. That does not make much
difference for
$7,000 a car and 2,000 extra deaths each year.
“It’s
not necessarily a smaller car
that we’re talking about,” Deans replied. “You look at Chevy Malibu.
That is a
3,400-pound car. It’s not a small car. It’s getting 33-miles to the
gallon. We
believe Detroit can do this.”
Maybe
they can. Maybe they can’t. If
they could, I’d think they would do it to meet consumer demand. They’d
do it
without government forcing it on us.
“New
technologies can make cars
safer,” Kazman acknowledged. “The point is, if you put the technologies
in a
large, heavier car, that car will be safer still. ... None of the
proponents of
these standards would acknowledge (the lives lost). It’s always
win-win, and
that is nonsense.”
Life
involves tradeoffs. If we want to
minimize deaths from auto accidents, we may use more fuel than we might
otherwise use. Who should make that decision, the government? Or you
and I?
In
the land of the supposedly free,
that really should not be a tough question.
Read
it at Townhall
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