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TODAY Friday 6 February 1998 Each weekday. Conn Nugent on what's new in the world, on the site.

 

TODAY IN THE WORLD: Adam Smith and Automobile Efficiency

Gasoline is cheap and getting cheaper. The damages that will accrue from tailpipe emissions of carbon dioxide can't be predicted with precision, and the worst of those damages are decades away. The auto industry is in a global state of overcapacity, and profit margins on small and intermediate-size cars are shrinking; the big money is made by catering to the tastes of Americans (and people in other countries who spend like Americans) who favor roomy powerful vehicles that sit high above the ground and can operate on bad roads or no roads. There is no credible chance that the US Congress will impose new fuel efficiency standards anytime soon.

Why, then, are carmakers talking so green all of a sudden?

At the recent Detroit Auto Show, manufacturers were falling all over each other to roll out prototypes of new-era vehicles. There were hybrid gasoline-electric cars, hydrogen fuel cell cars, and all-electrics with extended-range batteries. The Big Three CEOs talked about their commitments to the environment, and one of them even said that he looked forward to consigning the internal combustion engine to oblivion. Whoa.

And yesterday there was more. Two side-by-side articles by Matthew Wald in The New York Times tell the story. "Joint Effort to Raise Fuel Economy of 'Light Trucks'" is atop "Big 3 to Make Cleaner Cars Than Required."

Story Number One reports on an Administration announcement that it had secured the agreement of the big automakers and their suppliers to conduct a cooperative research effort designed to increase the fuel efficiency of pickups, vans, and SUVs 50% by 2004. A separate research program for heavy trucks is already underway. Heavy trucks and buses in the US consume 2 million barrels of fuel a day; pickups, vans, and SUVs consume 3 million barrels; passenger cars consume 4.5 million. The passenger cars are already covered under Al Gore's public/private "Partnership for the Next Generation Vehicle," which aims to develop by 2004 a production model five-passenger car that gets 80 miles per gallon.

[An interesting element of these efforts is the role of the Pentagon. One of the reasons that everyone is so confident about these fuel-efficiency goals is that the military has already demonstrated their practicality. A modern commander likes electric vehicles because they provide the attacker with an element of surprise; they're quiet and they emit little, thereby frustrating defenses built around heat-seeking technologies. Wald reports that the Defense Department has already rolled out a hybrid gas-electric Humvee that doubles the fuel efficiency and accelerates twice as fast as the current model.]

Story Number Two is that the Big Three have agreed with the EPA to begin in 1999 to market passenger cars that reduce the emissions of some key pollutants by 70% -- except in California and four states in the Northeast, where standards will be even higher. You don't won't to know all the details, but the 1990 Clean Air Act gave California the right to develop emission standards stricter than the feds, and gave every other state the option of following California or US standards. California imposed some dramatic requirements on the carmakers, the most famous of which were incremental quotas for the marketing of "zero-emission vehicles" and "very low emission vehicles." The auto companies have done a good job of softening and delaying those California quotas, but they still exist, and the companies didn't want other states to adopt them. We'll build a "49 state car" to comply with federal standards, they said, but we need all 49 non-California states to sign on. Then the EPA put up some tougher-than-expected federal emission standards, the states of New York, Massachusetts, Vermont and Maine bullheadedly stuck with the even-tougher California standards, and then on Wednesday night-- guess what? -- the Big Three gave in and said yes, they would build a 45-state car that would operate even more cleanly than the federal mandate.

[Our response at Liberty Tree is to try to make it a 42-state car by drumming up support for the annexation of Connecticut, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire by their more virtuous neighbors. Vermont and Maine could attack New Hampshire from two sides and Massachusetts should have no trouble mounting a south-facing solar strike force that could overcome Connecticut and Rhode Island without undue difficulty. New York would bankroll the operation, and supply the New Englanders with those neat new humvees. Then we move to a non-aggression pact with California.]

It's way too early to say that everything has turned out wonderfully, but these stories by Matt Wald describe truly welcome developments. And -- at last, here is our point -- these developments did not occur because of market forces. Markets are great for some things -- productivity, variety, innovation, social mobility -- but they have spotty capacities to preserve nature and natural resources. These advances in auto technology will need to make a profit, no question, but it's useful to remember that they come from non-market sectors: the military (that most socialist of institutions); legislators and regulators; and environmentalists and opinion-shapers influenced by environmentalists. We need many carrots, many sticks.

 

TODAY ON THE SITE

The Grove -- our free electronic newsletter -- works very simply. Every other week (when we're punctual) subscribers get a longish e-mail. In that e-mail are: an exclusive article by Donella Meadows; insider information about what's new and what's upcoming on the site; some recommendations for other sites you'll find interesting or amusing; and letters from readers responding to the aforementioned. Painless, often edifying. Early this morning we sent out an issue where Donella revealed that she's shaken her TV jones entirely. I can't tell you here what she says about Seinfeld. Subscribe.

 

Recent "Today" columns:

2/5: Clean Water, Naturally
2/4: Roll, Storms, Roll
2/3: Land Purchase Fever
2/2: Groundhog Day in the Persian Gulf
1/30: Trees and Hormones
1/29: Things To Come (2)
1/28: Things To Come
1/27: 'Bye, 'Bye Brazil
1/26: Jaywalking and Jaydriving
1/23: Good Biotech, Bad Biotech
1/22: No More Roads
1/21: Swordfish
1/20: Electromagnetic Sleuthing
1/16: Good News Way Down Under
1/15: Twenty-Four Forty or Fight!
1/14: Your Tax Dollars at Work
1/13: Johnny Mobil Appleseed
1/12: Superbowl, Scientific Uncertainty, and the Future of Al Gore
1/9: Goodbye, Delaware
1/8: Leaf Blowers, Old Cars, Class Conflict
1/7: The Great Improvement That Didn't
1/6: Proactive, Shmoactive
1/5: Mediocre Landscapes and Hope for the Planet
1/2: The Greatest Environmental Cause of the Year
12/31/97: The Top Twelve Environment Stories of 1997

To access more "Today" columns, click "Archives" below.