The American Spectator

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The Nation's Pulse

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The U.S. industry is currently set to spend $2 billion to comply with new fuel economy rules for light trucks. The Senate bill would cost automakers, who already suffer huge "legacy" costs from previous generous pension and health insurance contracts, about $114 billion to retool their assembly lines.

Explains Gary Witzenburg of the Car Connection: "Almost no one outside the fuel-economy business understands how incredibly tough, probably impossible, and enormously expensive that really would be. Even Toyota -- whose hybrid-boosted 2006 car and truck CAFEs were 34.4 and 23.7 mpg, respectively -- calls the 35-mpg standard 'very aggressive' and 'difficult to meet,' adding that, 'the time frame is too soon.'" The only way to meet the standard, he adds, "would be to dieselize and hybridize virtually everything -- at an incremental cost (not retail price) of $5000- $8000 per vehicle -- and downsize trucks to where they could barely haul the contents of a homeless auto worker's shopping cart. New emissions standards are making diesels way more expensive, and there's not enough battery raw material on the planet for an all- hybrid fleet."

Yet even accepting the flawed assumptions of the bill's backers, the energy benefits would be minimal. Explains Jerry Taylor of the Cato Institute: "If the Senate's proposed CAFE standard of 35 mpg by 2020 were to become law, proponents believe that it would reduce oil consumption by, at most, about 1.2 million barrels a day. Given that the Energy Information Administration thinks world crude oil production would be 103.8 million barrels a day by 2020, the reduction would be 1.2 percent of global demand and result in a 1.3 percent decline in price-- nowhere near enough to defund terrorists, denude oil producers of wealth, or secure energy independence."

No matter. Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND) rhapsodized: "Now, in our vehicles, we have better cup-holders, we have keyless entry, we have better music systems, we have heated seats. It is time that we expect more automobile efficiency."

The main alternative comes from Reps. Baron Hill (D-Ind.) and Lee Terry (R-Neb.), who have introduced what they call a "tough piece of legislation, with no loopholes and no gimmicks." It would maintain separate standards for autos and light trucks, hiking the levels to 35 mpg and 32 mpg, respectively, by 2022. Although only slightly less stringent than the Senate bill, the Hill-Terry legislation was denounced as "feeble" by the Sierra Club.

Actually, the Sierra Club is right. The "moderate" position is to only wreck the industry, kill people, and limit consumer choice more slowly, while having even less impact on energy use. To think that we pay lawmakers to come up with such klunkers.

Rising fuel costs are the best antidote to high energy consumption. As prices rise, people drive less and switch to more fuel-efficient vehicles. Indeed, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Cal.) didn't realize the import of her remarks when she chided Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta last year for not unilaterally hiking CAFE standards more: "You are so far behind what's even happening in the marketplace." If so, why not leave the issue up to the marketplace?

Washington has come up with a lot of bad policies over the years. Few are worse than CAFE. If someone in the nation's capital doesn't wake up and fight this counterproductive legislation, we might wake up to find that we have no auto industry left.

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