One of the most frustrating aspects of the climate debate has to be the fact that just about every informed pundit, across the ideological spectrum, agrees that a carbon tax would be an outstanding way to reduce carbon emissions -- and yet no one considers such a tax politically feasible. One might suggest that if pundits weren't constantly qualifying their support for a carbon tax with lamentations about its political impossibility, political support might be more forthcoming.
In the meantime, however, the blogosphere has taken the debate over the best policy-that-can-never-be in a new direction: since we almost certainly can't pass a carbon tax, should we support higher fuel efficiency standards for our automobiles?
In general, smart commentators have concluded that the answer is yes, and it isn't difficult to see why. Better efficiency standards should reduce carbon emissions, so long as they don't induce too much new driving. (Because more efficient vehicles use less fuel per mile, they make driving cheaper, and thereby encourage people to do more of it.) But our best estimates tend to show that the increase in miles driven wouldn't overwhelm the per-mile reduction in carbon emitted, suggesting that an increase in efficiency should net us an overall decline in carbon output. Case closed, right?
Not exactly. There are a number of good reasons to think carefully before pursuing new CAFE rules.
First and foremost, legislation to raise efficiency standards will be subject to serious political pressure, and one of the primary goals of that pressure will be to delay or slowly phase in new standards. Couple that delay with the time it takes to roll over an appreciable percentage of the current automobile fleet, and it could be a decade or more before higher efficiency standards begin to have any effect on carbon emissions. A carbon tax -- or an increased gas tax -- would have an effect from the day it was introduced, not least of which would be to raise revenue, the better to fund other carbon reduction strategies.
Perhaps more worrisome is that fact that better fuel efficiency might make long-term strategies to reduce emissions less effective, by making consumer demand for gasoline less responsive to price shifts. Consider this: by reducing the cost of driving additional miles, more efficient engines will encourage drivers to live farther away from their places of business -- efficiency, in other words, contributes to sprawl. But a sprawling population will find it much harder to substitute away from driving to public transit, bicycling, or walking. Gas prices can increase a great deal, but people still need to get to work; if sprawl limits their transportation alternatives they'll be forced to continue driving.
What's more, by reducing the cost of driving, more efficient engines will reduce the competitiveness of current automobile alternatives. An individual purchase of an efficient automobile could actually increase overall emissions if the money saved on gas convinces the purchaser to drive rather than take transit. Given better efficiency standards, future transit subsidies would have to be higher to attract riders. A carbon tax, by contrast, would reduce the need for transit subsidies (while providing revenue to put toward transit operation).
And at some point, we may decide that it is absolutely necessary to levy a carbon tax. A number of pundits have suggested that there's no reason to suspect that higher efficiency standards and a carbon tax need be mutually exclusive -- without realizing that more efficient engines will frustrate the goals of a tax regime. If you need less fuel to travel ten miles, then it will take a much higher fuel tax rate to discourage you from traveling that distance.
Of course, at the end of the day, we might decide that new CAFE rules are better than nothing. The New York Times reported today that the citizens of the developing nations of China and India will be in the market for hundreds of millions of new automobiles over the next decade. Transferable innovations in efficiency technology, developed here as a result of higher efficiency standards, might be crucial for mitigating the impact of such an increase in vehicles in operation. But I see no reason to accept CAFE legislation as acceptable on its own. A carbon tax or increased gasoline tax passed within the next few years is likely to do much more good than new CAFE legislation today. We should do our best to make the politically difficult possible.
Capturing the massive social benefits of fuel efficiency requires regulation
John McCain’s troubles are the world’s troubles
Comments
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GreyFlcn Posted 9:57 am
12 Oct 2007
The thought of doing cap-and-trade for individual car owners would be ludicrous.
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Sam Wells Posted 10:38 am
12 Oct 2007
Onward through the fog
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Jon Rynn Posted 2:15 pm
12 Oct 2007
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Pangolin Posted 3:00 pm
12 Oct 2007
And we won't institute a carbon tax and use the revenue to fund efficiency upgrades because that would lower the overall tax base in the long run and reduce corporate profits.
Better visit Florida now before the flood.
Humans, as a species, are too stupid to survive.
Put the Carbon Back
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Tim Hurst Posted 7:51 pm
12 Oct 2007
Sorry for the rant
Timothy B. Hurst
ecopolitology.blogspot.com
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justlou Posted 9:18 pm
12 Oct 2007
As long as AutoNacional can weasel out of CAFE by mythologizing that they are providing the vehicles we are demanding they will get their way with Congress. And as long as the public gains their sense of identity from pounding pavement with big/powerful/safe/cool/sexy then Congress will be safe in continuing to perpetuate the myth.
Don't give us real, long lasting liberty but give us ten more years of borrowed and bridled liberty.
We have a destiny with Reckoning which grows with each missed and muddled opportunity. The Big Suck is fast approaching. How many Hansen units will pass before we finally get it?
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Sam Wells Posted 1:08 am
13 Oct 2007
The top five percent of US wage earners will probably always buy "urban assault vehicles" although I do see some going green. But for "Joe Sixpack" the rising costs have to limit travel at some time or other.
Living in a seaside resort community I can vouch that we've seen a substantial reduction in travel from outside the metro area. High gas prices have not only limited vehicle traffic outside 200 miles but curtailed recreational boating as well.
The question is whether this market signal will keep squeezing vehicle activity and limit those "urban assault vehicles." Both people and the petroleum markets are extremely fickle ... but one prediction could be that eventually we'll have to have rationing (yipes!) so the DOD can get their hands on all that transportation fuel to fight overseas wars. Freakin' nightmare, man.
Onward through the fog
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justlou Posted 3:03 am
13 Oct 2007
Many of the "hybrids" on the market today are not much greener than their nonhybrid precursors so the ratio is actually worse than the numbers tell.
Even the auto maker leading the hybrid revolution, Toyota, is pumping umpteen Tundra pickups into the US market and fighting CAFE standards alongside their US competitors. Go figure.
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Jon Rynn Posted 3:31 am
13 Oct 2007
Justlou, I think you hit the nail on the head, defeating deniers will be nothing to starving the beast.
Tim, I feel your pain, we're near Chicago which used to be the hub of the national railway system -- now the hub of the airline system -- and to go by train to seattle or sf takes 18 hours, and even to a nearby city is long and expensive. Maybe from small light rail beginnings can come some bigger interurban steps.
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GreyFlcn Posted 5:53 am
13 Oct 2007
A mandatory dashboard gauge showing your realtime mileage. In all newly manufactured automobiles.
Part of the biggest problem with energy consumption is that it's practically intangible.
Much like trying to tell time, without a clock.
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Sam Wells Posted 2:18 am
14 Oct 2007
After that it gets rather complicated. All-electric vehicles having a battery only really measure discharge rate, not kW-hours (although I suppose one could, taking into consideration regenerative braking). Not all fuels have the same inherent brake specific fuel consumption (BSFC), which would make bio-diesel and ethanol flex-fuel metering difficult at best.
But maybe a micro-processor can actually figure power and energy as well as CO2 equivalents.
Beyond that, I suppose there could be some "avoidance" when you test drive a car before you buy one, but after the first couple of cranks you'll see the same numbers over and over again. For example, you'd might see 40 MPG on the highway and 32 on non-highway roads. I suppose one could check the numbers after a year when maintenance is performed to see if the numbers improve, but basically you get what you get.
That's why EPA and others have rating programs such as the green car programs. Some programs award one to five stars based on how green a vehicle or engine is.
Onward through the fog
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Pangolin Posted 3:21 am
14 Oct 2007
As to the technological challenge, Volvo has been making cars with MPG readings as part of the computerized dash options.
It reads in either second-by-second update, or a running average. As most cars now have engine management computers this isn't a problem of information but display.
Put the Carbon Back
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GreyFlcn Posted 3:31 am
14 Oct 2007
_
The whole point though is that if MPG was in your face, that the public would be far more aware of it.
And that alone would be a perfect wedge to cause change to happen.
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Sean Casten Posted 4:32 am
14 Oct 2007
The fuel costs of a car are a tiny fraction of the ownership costs of a car, for the simple reason that most of the time you own a car, you aren't driving it. Thinking that lower fuel costs (whether through tax policy or better fuel economy) will encourage more driving simply doesn't pencil out economically, for the same reason that our recent $2 increase in gasoline prices hasn't caused people to drive less. Really inelastic demand.
Consider: if the average American drives 15,000 miles/year and gets 30 mpg (just to keep our math easy), that means she uses 500 gallons of gasoline. At $3/gallon, that's $1500/year. A 30% increase in fuel economy is worth $500/year, or less than $10/week. That simply isn't going to shift behavior nearly as much as policy shifts to affect the price of the vehicle (for example, the tax breaks provided to HEV owners) or mandated fuel efficiency, a la CAFE. These aren't the only two options of course, but the critical point is that if you want to material impact transportation fuel use, you have to focus efforts at the vehicle, rather than fuel level.
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Sam Wells Posted 5:04 am
14 Oct 2007
Onward through the fog
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Biodiversivist Posted 2:19 pm
14 Oct 2007
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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justlou Posted 9:51 pm
14 Oct 2007
I'd agree with overall, total miles driven, the higher mileage vehicle will probably not double mileage driven.
But, for long, several hundred mile journeys, where you have second thoughts about driving the Subaru, you would be less inclined to have second thoughts about starting the journey in a Prius.
How many people have any hesitation about driving anywhere?
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idealist4sale Posted 5:23 am
15 Oct 2007
http://blogspot.idealist4sale.com
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mmcconne Posted 8:19 am
30 Oct 2007
The creation of a tax in no way takes away from the value of other programs such as CAFE. I absolutely agree that this must happen, especially in our current political climate.
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