Posted on 01/05/2013 11:14:51 AM PST by Sub-Driver
Whoops—'Cash for Clunkers' Actually Hurt the Environment Takepart.com – Thu, Jan 3, 2013
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Back in 2009, President Obama’s “Cash for Clunkers” program was supposed to be a boon for the environment and the economy. During a limited time, consumers could trade in an old gas-guzzling used car for up to $4,500 cash back towards the purchase of a fuel-efficient new car. It seemed like a win for everyone: the environment, the gasping auto industry and cash-strapped consumers.
Though almost a million people poured into car dealerships eager to exchange their old jalopies for something shiny and new, recent reports indicate the entire program may have actually hurt the environment far more than it helped.
According to E Magazine, the “Clunkers” program, which is officially known as the Car Allowance Rebates System (CARS), produced tons of unnecessary waste while doing little to curb greenhouse gas emissions.
The program's first mistake seems to have been its focus on car shredding, instead of car recycling. With 690,000 vehicles traded in, that's a pretty big mistake.
According to the Automotive Recyclers Association (ARA), automobiles are almost completely recyclable, down to their engine oil and brake fluid. But many of the “Cash for Clunkers” cars were never sent to recycling facilities. The agency reports that the cars’ engines were instead destroyed by federal mandate, in order to prevent dealers from illicitly reselling the vehicles later.
The remaining parts of each car could then be put up for auction, but program guidelines also required that after 180 days, no matter how much of the car was left, the parts woud be sent to a junkyard and shredded.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
All in the name of an imaginary cause of "saving the planet," a place we have inhabited for a fraction of a nanosecond so far in the context of time.
Such wanton, willful destruction of useful technology was malevolent in spirit and in deed, catering to the amoral conceit of environmentalism.
Holy cow. You're right.
The word "clunkers" in the name is absolutely false advertising. It was done with perfectly good vehicles.
It was morally wicked to wantonly destroy perfectly good things. Plain wicked. As Marie said:
Don’t forget the loss of opportunity for poor people and kids trying to buy their first beater. It was a disgusting waste.
Destroying perfectly good things is morally WRONG. See the fruit it bears.
Somebody correct me if I’m wrong but I thought that the clunkers “bought” by the program couldn’t be touched for parts.
You called it spot on.
It is part of a power grab attempted by a minority.
As if we didn’t already know that.
Lack of replacement parts -- that's another example of what happens when amorality pursues the destruction of perfectly good stuff. It creates strife because it's evil. That alone is reason to overcome the entire "global" mindset behind it.
Like any Hitler, Franco or Mussolini would “fix” anything
I pointed that out at the time. Only an idiot whose only real job in his life was scooping ice cream for a few weeks would be so dumb he couldn’t see it.
More "pollution" is generated in the manufacturing process, from materials to actual automobile construction, in the form of energy used and waste by-products than all of the tailpipe emissions of the entire life of a car. By shredding perfectly good autos and all the potential replacement parts contained therein long before the end of their useful service life the original energy and waste by-products expended in their production was used for a much more short term payback.
New materials, parts and cars have to be manufactured from scratch to meet the demand. As the used parts market runs out of replacement parts sooner than normal entire autos will become junk before their useful service life is naturally expended.
As you can see the amount of energy consumed and toxic waste products created was geometrically expanded due to this program. The reduction in tailpipe emissions from trading a 25 mpg car for a 35 mpg car wouldn't even register as a blip on a graph in comparison.
some blogs we reporting the scrap metal went to China
I have long thought this about liberalism: Liberals are compelled to control everything, and it stems from their belief they are smarter than anyone else. Conservatives understand that you do not need to re-invent the wheel. The problem with reinventing wheels, policies or anything else is that you often make the same mistakes the first inventor did, unless you take extra care to see why those mistakes occurred.
Liberals do not have the humility to understand this. It is why liberals are all socialists to a greater or lesser degree and believe in big, centralized government.
I use the analogy of a jumbo jet flying through the sky on auto-pilot, with no flight crew present, and a passenger opens the cockpit door and enters.
Conservatives would enter the cockpit, look around and take stock of the situation. They might look at the fuel gauge, look at the attitude and get a general feel of the situation. They probably wouldn’t touch anything right away, realizing that there are circumstances where doing something for the sake of doing something can be far more harmful. They might decide to put the headphones on, see if they can communicate with anyone, see if they can hear anything, and so on. They would probably try to find someone who could talk them down, and failing that, might try to figure out if there was anyone onboard with piloting experience.
Liberals would enter the cockpit, look around and scream out “Nobody is flying the plane!” They would jump in the pilot seat, grab the control stick and shout “We have to get this plane on the ground or we’re all going to die!” They might dive the plane towards the earth, looking frantically for an airport, making the assumption that of course, you could fly a plane from the sky “just by looking around, there is the airport over there, let’s get to it!” without realizing that is one of the most difficult things even for veteran pilots who might have the advantage of at least being familiar with the area and comfortable with trying to pick up landmarks from the air. They would dive the plane, then suddenly realize they don’t know how to turn the plane, how to apply rudder or lower the flaps and landing gear (probably wouldn’t even realize those were needed) and would simultaneously realize they had no idea how to stabilize the plane in level flight or re-engage the autopilot. The passengers, feeling the gyrations of the aircraft and knowing something was wrong, would begin to panic, and before you know it, there would be a huge flaming hole in the ground.
It is the same thing with a military campaign, an economic crisis, an environmental issue, solving an education or social problem, or just about anything else you can think of.
Liberals see the levers, dials and controls of something powerful and complicated, and instead of figuring out how they work or even if they work, they make the assumption that no matter what, they can control this better than anyone or anything that controlled it before. They don’t even think that sometimes putting your hands on the levers of something powerful is much, much more damaging than keeping your bloody damned hands OFF of them.
If it is a military campaign, they get in their armchairs and begin looking at the maps, targets and forces involved, pick up the phones and begin issuing orders and edicts to generals. You end up with the Bay of Pigs, the Cuban Missile Crisis, Vietnam, Desert One and Mogadishu.
On environmental issues you end up with some kind of foreign species of fish that you brought in from South America to control some other kind of issue, and it ends up destroying the native ecosystem, or on a global scale, you destroy the ability to obtain energy for an energy dependent world because you need to save the existence of the Alaskan Spotted Lugwort. They determined through their “science” that DDT made the egg shells of predatory birds thin causing their populations to decrease, and viewing it as a canary in a coal mine, outlawed DDT, thereby condemning tens of millions of people (or over the years, perhaps even hundreds of millions) to misery and death from insect borne diseases such as malaria. Even worse, you end up with liberals trying to deliberately destroy industry and economies, an attempt to plunge the entire western world into a depression, and they base their desire to do this on “Global Warming”. To sum up this particular angle and encapsulate the liberal mindset on all these issues, but most importantly environmental ones, remember this quote from a feminist wall mural I see in Cambridge, MA: “INDICATION OF HARM, NOT PROOF OF HARM IS OUR CALL TO ACTION”. Look well upon that quote...it sums up liberalism in one compact line.
If it is a economic or social issue, they begin to make policy and throw money at it without even considering for a single damned second if what they are doing is really going to produce the expected result. If it doesn’t help or makes things worse, they simply throw more money and legislation at the issue, without bothering to dismantle the agencies or defund what they did before that failed miserably. In this, you end up with Rent Control (a liberal invention which destroys the availability of affordable housing), Social Security (a liberal invention, a Ponzi scheme on a grand scale that gave people the false security they didn’t have to save for themselves) the Great Society, Welfare, School Busing, declining ability of students and failing schools, disintegration of the family and soon, socialism and Third World Squalor.
And folks, this President, is steeped up to his oversized jug-handled ears in the arrogance and ignorance of Liberalism. He is a racist, socialist and marxist. He believes it to the core, and he is now the most powerful man in the world.
We have a problem.
>> We have a problem.
Great essay - thanks for spending the time to put it to paper.
You are most welcome. FR gives me a medium to say it...:)
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