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Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Obama: "Screw the poor."

The Denver Post applauds "President Obama's decision to greatly accelerate higher fuel efficiency and emissions standards for automobiles." (See today's editorial "Pedal to the metal on fuel standards.")

Of course, higher fuel efficiency means new cars will cost more money. When anything costs more money, it disproportionatley affects the poor. Rich people will write a bigger check when they want a new car. Poor people do not have that option. They will have to do without.

So what? Poor people's needs are secondary to a greener planet.

The Post recognizes the cost of the regulations but, like Obama, shrugs them off:

Critics say the new rules will add $1,300 to a new car's price tag. Obama says the cost on fuel savings over the life of the car — about $2,800 — would cover the cost of the improvements.

Savings over the longterm do nothing to help the single-mother sitting in the showroom when she needs the money NOW to buy a car. But so what? Her needs are secondary to a greener planet.

Posted by at 6:58 AM
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1 comments:

  1. As someone who's been looking at new cars lately, the dollar savings for higher efficiencies is the least of my worries. And it depends just as much on gas prices as it does how many miles I drive.

    Now forking out an extra $1300 up front, that starts to make a difference. Especially if I'm taking out a loan for 3-5 years and that's another $1300 gathering interest. Obama's statement may be true but it's not comparing apples to apples. If he wants total costs for efficiencies, he needs to take into total costs for that extra money up front. And since we know those are generalizations, what sort of actual total costs are people facing who need bigger vehicles. How much more will my plumber have to spend to buy his work van? How much of that will I end up paying indirectly through paying the bill from him?

    The sad thing is Denver used to have the Brown Cloud. It rears it's ugly head every now and then but not like it used to. And we were able to address it without raising real dollar costs for cars, at least not by a lot as cars today cost the same in real dollars as they have for the last 10-15 years (and they offer a lot more).

    Will these new CAFE standards address pollution proportionally to their high costs? Or will we find out in a few years that fancy new techniques for light weight steel and other similar things actually cause more pollution and consume more energy than what is "saved" by the vehicles?
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