Obama speaks truth, shoots self in foot

The auto industry and two politicians who tell the truth about it.

UPDATE: 12may07 - the Senate has approved a bill which would require the total fleet average to rise to 35mpg by 2020.  Golly gee, how exciting.  I think we probably have the technology to do that, like, NOW… why do we have to wait until 2020?

Senator Barack Obama was criticized for taking the auto industry to task this week:

“For years, while foreign competitors were investing in more fuel-efficient technology for their vehicles, American automakers were spending their time investing in bigger, faster cars,” he said, according to a text of his remarks. “And whenever an attempt was made to raise our fuel efficiency standards, the auto companies would lobby furiously against it, spending millions to prevent the very reform that could’ve saved their industry.”

He’s in good company.  Ah-nuld Schwarzenegger told the auto industry “Get off your butts” after Michigan congressjerk Joe Knollenberg whined about the Governator’s advocacy of higher fuel-economy standards. 

“Now, there’s a billboard in Michigan that accuses me of costing the car industry $85 billion,” Schwarzenegger said at a speech in Washington. “The billboard says, ‘Arnold to Michigan: Drop dead.’ The fact of the matter is what I’m saying is, Arnold to Michigan: Get off your butt. Get off your butt and join us. What we are doing is we are pushing them to make changes, to make the changes so they can sell their cars in California,” he said. “And we all know—let’s be honest—that if they don’t change, someone will. The Japanese will. The Chinese will. The South Koreans will. The Germans will.”

In response to Obama, representatives of an industry group (that even included some Japanese car makers) complained:

[calling for increased fuel-efficiency] but only to “the maximum feasible level.” “Let’s get on with the show,” Stanton said in an interview Wednesday. “Congress should act, but not arbitrarily pick a number, because it could be the wrong number.”

My one request of the auto lobbyists?  Shut the hell up.  Your “maximum feasible level” will be a gnat’s eyelash above current levels.  Your “right number” will be whatever allows you to sit on your butts, you corporate whiners.

Obama’s right that the American auto industry has done everything it can to keep strip-mining the auto market with high-profit, padded light trucks they promoted to evade auto regulations.  They created and energized the SUV market and now people are driving 7,000 lb vehicles with “Support the troops” magnets on them.  Every time someone proposes less pollution or better fuel economy they haul out their indignation and say the legislation is “anti auto-industry”.

Worried about Congress “picking the wrong number”?  Fine, here’s a number: 35 mpg.  Back in 1968 our family bought a 4-door Fiat 124g sedan.  It was roomy and comfortable (my dad was 6’2”) and had an enormous trunk.  It handled great and had 4-wheel disk brakes.  When cruising at 75 mph it got 35 mpg.  That was 39 years ago.  Anyone think we should be making cars that get worse mileage now?

In 1973 I remember watching Henry Ford II on television, claiming with a straight face that “a practical 35mpg car is still ten years away.”  Sure… ten years in the past.  I am sick and tired of excuses from the American auto industry.  I am tired of reading headlines about automakers laying off workers while Honda and Toyota and Hyundai build factories here. 

I was really hoping Obama would have a shot at the presidency, too.  But then he went and told the truth, so his chances are probably reduced.  And we complain that our politicians lie and tell people what they want to hear.  Obama went to Detroit to say this stuff!  The man has cajones of chrome-vanadium tool steel. 

The Chicago Tribune says gas will be $5 a gallon this summer. 
- and the automakers have started another ad blitz to fight ever having to do the right thing.

Posted by George on 05/10/07 at 06:11 PM
Science & Technology • Transportation •

  1. Good on Obama, and Kompliment an Arnie.

    Why do I have the sneaking suspicion that all this whining from the Big Three has something to do with money and shortsightedness?

    Posted by zilch  on  05/11/07  at  02:50 AM

  2. Back in 1968 our family bought a 4-door Fiat 124g sedan

    Ted was an owner of a maroon Fiat 124 sedan from 1980-1985. What a POS, yet the constant repairs were lovable in their own piddly way. My clutch cable broke about five times in five years. Plus several other eyetalian engineering failures. Still, a car that gave one ample life-experience.

    Market Failures

    Scientists, economists and political leaders who support action against global warming all construct their proposals on a simple foundation: attaching a cost to carbon emissions. Since the U.S. (and most other big polluters, like China and Russia) does not regulate greenhouse gas emissions, factories and power plants and cars can pump carbon into the atmosphere for free; to the polluter, carbon today has no cost. This despite all the costs global warming could impose on the world, from lower crop yields to destabilizing migrations and the greater international conflict that a group of retired generals and admirals warned about in testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Wednesday.

    Since none of those costs are internalized to fossil fuels like coal and oil, the effect is to artificially lower their price. That distortion encourages overuse of fossil fuels and discourages investment in clean energy alternatives (such as wind, solar, and above all, greater efficiency) that don’t produce greenhouse gases. “The biggest market failure we have in the world is the fact that [carbon emissions], which are potentially threatening our ability even to survive on this planet, has no price,” says environmental consultant Roger Ballentine, the chairman of the White House climate change task force under President Clinton. “It has a cost. But it has no price.” So for almost every political leader at home and abroad who accepts the need to pursue mandatory reductions in greenhouse emissions—a group from which the dead-ender at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue remains conspicuously absent—the first priority is to create a cost for carbon. The question now sharpening in Congress and the 2008 presidential race is how best to do that.

    Posted by Ted  on  05/11/07  at  05:58 AM

  3. This is indeed part of the more general problem: using up the capital of the world (in the form of nonrenewable resources) as if it were interest.

    Posted by zilch  on  05/11/07  at  06:30 AM

  4. Oh, yeah - the 124 was a POS as far as mechanical reliability went.  But being tempramental and unreliable was just an Italian thing; we still got 17 years out of it, I think.  The current equivalent is the Toyota Corolla, which gets even better mileage and is possibly the most reliable car ever made, and a darned nice car to boot.

    “using up capital…as if it were interest” - the phrase that sticks in my head is from Ann Druryan; “We batter the Earth as if we had someplace else to go.”

    Posted by george.w  on  05/11/07  at  07:26 AM

  5. DOF, excellent post it is very engaging.  At first when I read the title I thought this was going in a different direction.  And I was ready to defend Obama for speaking the truth.  But sadly you are right.  Politicians only tell the truth when they haven’t yet had the idealism sucked out of them.

    Maybe though as citizens, we need to expect our politicians for telling the truth.  I’m thinking we need some incentive… hmmm… maybe if we just voted for the politician that spoke the truth.

    Posted by webs05  on  05/11/07  at  09:26 AM

  6. Didn’t Bush once defend the right of every Red-Blooded American to drive an SUV—about six years ago?

    Posted by Paul Sunstone  on  05/11/07  at  01:58 PM

  7. Excellent post.  I’ve often wondered if the auto industry doesn’t actually own the gasoline, and profit from it’s sale.  Otherwise, why would they fight so hard to keep from making fuel-efficient vehicles?

    Posted by MorningGlory  on  05/13/07  at  06:15 AM

  8. While I don’t know of any financial connections between the Big Three and Big Oil, it would somehow not be surprising if there were.  But it’s probably enough that they have no real incentive to develop fuel-efficient vehicles, as long as gas is cheap and innovation is costly, at least in the short run.

    Posted by zilch  on  05/14/07  at  05:02 AM

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