Posted on 08/12/2002 8:16:08 AM PDT by dubyagee
No gas hogs in LaLa Land
ROWLAND NETHAWAY Senior editor
Californians are strutting about congratulating themselves for their new state law requiring higher automobile fuel efficiency.
They believe that California's new state law will force car manufacturers to stop producing gas-guzzling vehicles responsible for global warming.
The logic behind the new law requiring greater fuel efficiency from car manufacturers is a faith-based belief that the automobile industry is involved in a giant conspiracy to deny the public fuel-efficient cars.
Ford, General Motors and the other car manufacturers, according to these anti-big business addicts, have the secret to 300-miles-per-gallon internal combustion engines locked away in a safe somewhere. The car industries make immoral profits by keeping this information from the public.
These urban-myth conspiracy theories have been around since the invention of automobiles.
Since I was a boy I've heard stories about the invention of new spark plugs, carburetors or fuel additives that could allow cars to run for hundreds of miles on a gallon of gas.
Generally, the stories included specific details about how the inventors of these miracles had been paid off and threatened to keep their mouths shut, if not simply murdered. Their supposed inventions were guarded more closely than the Coca-Cola recipe.
Same conspiracies, different era
Fifty years ago, these fanciful tales were voiced by run-of-the-mill drug store and pool hall conspiracy buffs.
In recent years, it has been the greenies, environmental groups, anti-globalists and Californians who think that government laws can force General Motors et al to finally release these secret fuel-efficient technologies.
It was cockamamie nonsense in 1952 and it remains just as harebrained today.
Car manufacturers wouldn't have to offer zero percent interest rates to sell cars if they could build cars with the size and power that buyers want and also get hundreds of miles per gallon.
Every car, SUV and truck owner in the nation would line up to buy such a vehicle.
The oil industry might not be pleased with 300-miles-per-gallon cars and trucks, but, hey, that's the breaks. There will always be uses for oil.
Since no knowledgeable person expects revolutionary efficiency breakthroughs on the venerable internal combustion engine, about the only way to increase fuel efficiency is to decrease safety by making cars and trucks smaller and lighter.
Anti-SUV acolytes may want to see everyone in scooter cars and public buses, but that's a hard sell to motorists who don't feel better about themselves driving around in lightweight, cramped, underpowered vehicles.
The last I heard, the car manufacturers said they would contest the new California fuel-efficiency law.
I suggest that the automobile industry simply ignore the California law.
Californians think their state law will force the car industry worldwide to build cars to California's standards.
Instead, car manufacturers should notify all the car dealers in California that they will be out of business on the day the state's new fuel efficiency standards go into effect.
If Californians want to own a new car, they will have to move to another state.
After a while, California would look like Havana, Cuba, where the cars are caught in a 1950s time warp.
Californians want the rest of the nation to pay to subsidize their lifestyles, which includes a gluttonous appetite for oil, electricity and water taken from other states.
There will be a lot less self-righteous strutting in LaLa Land if the auto industry simply ignores California's new fuel-efficiency law.
Rowland Nethaway's columns appear on Wednesdays and Fridays. E-mail: RNethaway@wacotrib.com
No one is going to put that up for grabs. Nice theory though.
PS: Wonder what's going to make up the shortfall from all the lost fuel tax revenue?
I remember this idiot liberal I used to argue with on another board before I found Fr spouting a variation of this exact same theory.. cept' he threw "Big Oil" into the mix also.
He had allot of great conspiracys about what a scumbag henry ford was and how some other guy who had better ideas was just ripped to shreads by inferior companies with clout.
You dare to mention something like a bias in the media though and then, well.. you're just a tin foiler..
No, it'll never happen. As usual the rest of us will probably punished for the idiocy of a few.
Just once I would like to see them lead by example..
"Gee, sure.. I will buy that electric car as my only mode of transport"
"Gee, sure.. If someone wants to allow smoking in their restrauant then I just won't go there."
"Gee, sure.. keep my tax return, because I want to do my part!"
BUT NO, it's always foisted on us collectively.. "for our own good"
My wife figures that it took the bus out of town. Speaking of busses, she wants to see the Hollywood performer ditsos take the bus to the next Oscar Award ceremony. Lead the performance so to speak.
Not ALL; just the 90% who use the fricking things for commuter vehicles and other driving which could as easily be done in a normal car or motorcycle. Owning a van or SUV as your only vehicle is basically irresponsible.
Medved, owning a motorcycle or a small car as your only vehicle fits some folks' definition of irresponsible.
And I'm willing to bet that there are people who believe that whoever allows you to continue wasting both FR's bandwidth AND the Earth's precious supply of oxygen is far more irresponsible than an SUV owner.
It's true that most people who drive SUV's don't use them for hauling stuff *all* of the time. But, what do you do if you need to haul kids/dogs/stuff around *part* of the time?
Should each person be required to buy an SUV for the times they have to haul stuff, a mid-sized car for when they drive themselves and one or two other people, and a mini-car for when they are alone?
Talk about a crime against the planet.
You've just summed up the essence of liberalism in one concise statement.
You're making a great point. I'm pretty observant on the roads and I would easily classify SUV drivers as the greatest menace, even worse than the rice-burners for the simple reason that they must *think* they are driving a rice-burner by the way they drive these things. I agree that SUV's serve a purpose, but why in the world do the worst subset of incompetent drivers have to drive them??
Somewhere around the early 90's the Japanese, particularly Honda, started making cars to live longer than the people owning them. Many of those get sold used with 150K miles on them and still run like new, and can be bought for as little as $2000 here and there. That's one possibility for a second car, there are others. If you use the stupid SUV properly, i.e. only when there's some real need for it, the thing will last you 20 years. Surely that can't be a BAD thing...
Dependance on foreign oil compromises America's foreign policy and allows things like 9/11 to happen. 100 years ago, the kinds of people who did that were riding around the desert on camels and living in tents, and did not have the financial wherewithal to attempt such feats. If we were to do EVERYTHING within our power to eliminate the use of foreign oil, including developing every possible domestic energy resource AND get rid of bad habits like driving around in SUVs unnecessarily, it could be done.
We are dependant on foreign oil because enviro's think our soil's too good to drill on...That's our problem! DRILL ANWR!
It will never happen. The RATS will fight every single new oil well we try to drill anywhere in the United States.
Imported oil constitutes 60% of the oil we use today.
You can destroy every SUV on the road and barely make a dent in that number unless we find some way to stop the RATS from preventing us from exploiting US oil resources.
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