White House Issues New Gas Mileage Standards

Hugh Pickens writes "NPR reports that the Obama administration has signed off on the nation's first rules on greenhouse gas emissions and set new fuel standards to meet a fleet-wide average of 35.5 mpg that will raise current standards by nearly 10 mpg by the 2016 model year. Although the new requirements would add an estimated $434 per vehicle in the 2012 model year and $926 per vehicle by 2016, drivers could save as much as $3,000 over the life of a vehicle through better gas mileage, according to a government statement. 'We will be helping American motorists save money at the pump, while putting less pollution in the air,' says Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood. Dave McCurdy, leader of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, a trade group representing 11 automakers, says the industry supports a single national standard for future vehicles. 'Today, the federal government has laid out a course of action through 2016, and now we need to work on 2017 and beyond.' As the auto industry seeks to emerge from ashes, many manufacturers already are trying for the right mix of approaches, experts say. Some will try to sell more hybrids. Others are introducing not-so-gas-guzzling SUVs. They may also push slightly downsized and small cars, such as the Ford Fiesta."

Comments

Re:No bad thing

[maxume]

Why do you worry?

If you do a little controlling for available horsepower, vehicles have improved a huge amount since 1980, but people have spent a lot of the improvement on having more power available.

Re:Smaller engines would be a good start.

[Dirtside]

It wasn't always so. Ben Franklin and Henry David Thoreau very eloquently expressed a thriftiness that was uniquely American. It went hand in hand with self-reliance. When I see the over-fed, demanding, soft, food-stamp using Americans of 2010 who are claiming to champion a return to "every man for himself", I wonder how long they would last if any one of them were to actually be expected to pull their own not inconsiderable weight.

It's become obvious to me lately that advertising is a big culprit here. For the last sixty years, Madison Avenue and friends have been refining ways to convince us to do things that aren't in our best interests: buy more than we can afford, buy things that we don't need, buy, buy, BUY!

Advertising is corrosive. It sells an idea of a world where everything has a simple solution. Buy our product, and life will be BETTER! Even if you're smart and assume that advertising is always lying to you, being exposed to lies for years on end will start to make you believe them, or at least believe the normative view they come from.

My friends' kids, and my older son's friends are frequently obsessed with this cartoon character or that. Ours aren't. Why? We don't have TV. We haven't for about three years now, and so our son isn't getting exposed to constant advertising that exhorts him to eat shitty fake food at shitty fast-food chains, or to harass us to buy character-branded toys. All the video we watch, we watch on our computers after he's in bed. (And it's all ad-free; I don't really want to see ads any more than I want him to. In fact, I'd happily pay $2-3 per episode for the few shows we watch, if it meant no ads.)

A huge problem with "free" TV (that is, ad-supported TV) is that there's a cost associated with watching ads. As I said, it promotes a false worldview; even if the ad is relatively accurate, its sole purpose is to get you to spend money on something that you may not actually have any real need for. And the advertisers don't care if you spend money you don't have, or spend money on a product you don't need instead of saving for retirement, or your kids' education.

Okay, okay, I could go on for hours. Rant over.