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Magazine 24
Obama's 'Cash For Clunkers'
Unleashed 'Environmental Nightmare'
by
Wynton Hall
In
a classic tale illustrating the “law of unintended
consequences,” a new report concludes that President Barack Obama’s $3
billion “Cash
for Clunkers” taxpayer-funded boondoggle artificially drove car prices
up, not
down, and unleashed an “environmental nightmare” through shredding, not
recycling, many of the 690,000 cars people traded in for an up to
$4,500 car
credit.
In
2009, Mr. Obama proudly declared that his Cash for Clunkers
program, officially known as the Car Allowance Rebate System (CARS),
was a
stunning success. “There
were skeptics
who weren't sure that this ‘Cash for Clunkers’ program would work,”
said Mr.
Obama. “But I'm happy to report that it has succeeded well beyond our
expectations and all expectations, and we're already seeing a dramatic
increase
in showroom traffic at local car dealers…So I'm very pleased with the
progress
that's been made in the House today on the "Cash for Clunkers"
program.”
But
as Yahoo News notes, the program’s decision to shred, not
recycle, many of the trade-in vehicles unleashed an “environmental
nightmare”:
Shredding
vehicles results in its own environmental nightmare. For
each ton of metal produced by a shredding facility, roughly 500 pounds
of
“shredding residue” is also produced, which includes polyurethane
foams, metal
oxides, glass and dirt. All totaled, about 4.5 million tons of that
residue is
already produced on average every year. Where does it go? Right into a
landfill.
E
Magazine states recycling just the plastic and metal alone from
the CARS scraps would have saved 24 million barrels of oil. While some
of the
“Clunkers” were truly old, many of the almost 700,000 cars were still
in
perfectly good condition. In fact, many that qualified for the program
were
relatively “young,” with fuel efficiencies that rivaled newer cars.
A
study conducted by Resources for the Future further underscored
the program’s failure economically and environmentally:
Approximately
45 percent of the spending went to consumers who
would have purchased a new vehicle anyway. Our results suggest no gain
in sales
beyond 2009 and hence no meaningful stimulus to the economy. In
addition, the
program will reduce CO2 emissions by only 9 to 28.4 million tons,
implying a
cost per ton ranging from $91 to $288 even after accounting for reduced
criteria pollutants.
And
E—The Environmental Magazine says the Department of
Transportation’s declaration that Cash for Clunkers was a success is
simply a
case of smoke and mirrors:
The
Department of Transportation reported that Cash for Clunkers
was an environmental success...In general, drivers traded in
inefficient SUVs
and trucks for more efficient passenger cars. However, it’s quite easy
to
negate this small difference in gas mileage purely by the fact that
people will
be more likely to drive a vehicle that takes less money to fill up with
gas.
It’s an efficiency paradox: as we get more efficient at using energy,
the overall
cost of energy goes down, but we respond by using more of it. Auto
emissions of
carbon dioxide are directly proportional to gasoline consumed. With
only
690,000 fuel-efficient vehicles purchased and over 250 million cars
registered
in the U.S., that is a negligible difference in overall greenhouse gas
emissions.
As
the Washington Post even conceded, Mr. Obama’s Cash for
Clunkers scheme was an economic and environmental failure: “So were the
naysayers right?” asked the Post.
“It
seems so.”
Source:
Breitbart
Read
this and other articles at Mail Magazine
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