writing in the normally excellent Reason magazine, Steve Chapman questions the recent drive (pun intended) by elements in the US Congress to mandate better fuel efficiency in new cars, arguing that car's returning a higher mileage will leads to more congestion, accidents, etc. and that:
"If you want less of something, such as pollution from cars, the surest way is to charge people more for it.
A carbon tax or a higher gasoline tax would encourage every motorist, not just those with new vehicles, to burn less fuel—by taking the bus, carpooling, telecommuting, resorting to that free mode of transit known as walking, or buying a Prius."
I don't really want to get started on the appalling Prius (yet) but Mr Chapman makes the mistake of assuming, with regards to driving, that a majority (or even a large minority) of car journeys can easily be taken using a non-car substitutes. I doubt that is the case.
Commuting is a prime example, the car and high property prices in urban areas have encouraged people to live further and further from their place of work and commute by car where a non-car alternative is unavailable (which is most of the time).
As successive governments here in the UK have discovered, demand for petrol is very inelastic because there is simply no alternative for the majority of normal people. This inelasticity allows governments to raise the tax on petrol at will, confident that revenue will also increase, whilst at the same time claiming that their tax raising measures are somehow motivated by a 'green' agenda. Petrol here is the equivalent of $8.70 per gallon, yet there's been no decrease in car usage.
In the UK, now we've discovered that raising petrol prices has no beneficial environmental effect (unless you work in The Treasury), there's been a recent fashion for thinking that road pricing would both decrease congestion and greenhouse gas emissions, again by 'forcing' people to commute at peak times using public transport or commute at non-peak times when congestion (and traffic-jam-generated greenhouse gas emissions) would be less of a problem.
This is however yet another solution that really hasn't been thought through. Road pricing would be great for me and people like me, I can arrange flexible hours at work and avoid the queues if I have to (and a higher price on road travel would encourage me to do that), yet I am hardly typical. Most people have to work fixed hours and the model of the business they work for (think of shops or factories) simply do not allow for the kind of flexibility that 'knowledge workers' enjoy.
It seems that a large number of these so-called green measures currently being touted by politicians and lapped up by the media are either tremendously elitist (like the road pricing models thought up by people living in a bubble that excludes any real understanding of how normal people live and work) or narrowly focused on immediate benefits (like the appalling Prius, a car with environmental downsides that far outweigh its fuel efficiencies).
I'm not of course advocating any government regulation mandating fuel efficiency standards, I prefer governments that do nothing and let market solutions emerge. After all ,solutions based on markets are the only ones likely to last in the very-long term - and very-long term is how you have to think if you believe that global warming is a problem that needs to be corrected instead of adapted to (I don't).
Individuals are smart enough to realise that better fuel efficiencies are in their interests and demand vehicles that match those demands. Industry is smart enough to realise that providing those vehicles is a commercial winner. And I hope everyone is smart enough to realise that if you really are concerned about the environment, the best holistic approach is to hang on to the car you have as long as it runs rather than dashing out to buy (and cause to be built) a new vehicle, no matter how great it's MPG or how many hypocritical pop stars pretend to drive it.
