Concerning "Killer Logic: Now they tell us ANWR drilling saves lives. Yeah, right.": Natasha Hunter takes the anti-CAFE groups to task for hypocrisy. The real hypocrites are those who don't face without flinching what would truly reduce gas usage: a higher gas tax.
I tried to check the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) (whom normally I don't trust farther than I can throw them), cited by Hunter. They must be very smart individuals, designing such a fuel-efficient vehicle where Ford cannot. I couldn't verify their design because, bluntly, I will not purchase their publication on how they did it. I did notice they claimed use of low-friction tires -- which puts the vehicle at risk of sliding and other problems. You don't want low-friction tires on any vehicle. I will also call a "B.S." penalty on them for their "Real World" gas mileage. Unless they built these vehicles, real world numbers are difficult to produce -- unless they are "imaginary" (like much of what the UCS claims) real world numbers.
The recent National Academy of Sciences (NAS) report on CAFE standards talked forthrightly about the costs of increasing gas mileage. Its report can be actually read on the Web. Vehicles that get the mileage claimed by the UCS would only cost $700 more according to that organization. Yet the NAS states that the low end of the cost range for that mileage is ~$1,500; the high range is $3,000 (this uses the mid-size SUV example). I'll trust the NAS on this one.
The "life-saving" claim discussed by Hunter is also built on the NAS report, and is based on 1993 data. There is some controversy over whether this still applies, due to new design features. Hunter dismisses this discussion almost out of hand, quoting a Public Citizen advocate, Joan Claybrook, who claims it is the differential in vehicle sizes that cause these accidents. This ignores that 38 percent of fatalities occur in what are called single-vehicle crashes. SUVs are generally more protective to their occupants in both types of crashes.
Let's take both Hunter and Claybrook at their word, however, and introduce CAFE-type vehicles. The new mileage would not be fully implemented until 2012. And even then, older vehicles (including those heavy ones) will still be on the road long after they are manufactured, with a median lifetime age of 16 years. And they will threaten the newer, lighter vehicles. With the expected increase in vehicle costs, expect the average age of vehicles to increase as well, especially if economic conditions change such as they would under CAFE.
If Hunter et al. want to do something, let them push for a raise in gas taxes, and apply these taxes directly toward either energy infrastructure (i.e., for an eventual transition to fuel cells) or to better roads. This will have an immediate impact on people's decisions in buying new vehicles.
Regards,
Dr. Brendan Dooher
Fellow
National Academy of Engineering
Natasha Hunter Responds:
Dr. Dooher's recommendation is compelling. I could easily support raising the gas tax, although I suspect our friends in Congress would shoot this idea down even more quickly than they did CAFE standards.
My agreement with Dr. Dooher ends there, however. First, not all my data is dated: The Honda report I cited came out late last year and provides strong evidence for the compatibility of fuel efficiency and vehicle safety. As for the NAS report, show me more recent numbers and I'll use them instead.
I am not qualified to defend the UCS study, but I do point out that, aside from remarking that he trusts the organization as far as he could throw it (without saying why), the only scientific criticism Dr. Dooher makes is in regard to low-friction tires. Dr. Dooher claims these tires, which result in lower gas mileage, put the car at risk of "sliding and other problems." I'm not sure what information Dr. Dooher, a fellow at the data-driven National Academy of Engineering, is relying on. As Clarence Ditlow of the Center for Auto Safety puts it, "If the feds had trouble pinpointing Firestone tires, they would have even more trouble pinpointing low-friction tires as causing crashes. The data just do not exist. The databases are not set up to find that."
Dr. Dooher's contention that one must actually build a car to find out how fuel-efficient it is seems a little odd, especially coming from an engineer. Car manufacturers routinely and successfully employ the same sorts of computer modeling that UCS did to test all its auto features, from airbags to systems much more complex than fuel efficiency.
I concede that the NAS estimate of the price tag for increasing CAFE standards is higher than the figures I found. I think many people could be persuaded, and not just out of a sense of environmental responsibility, to pay more for a vehicle with better gas mileage, because money saved on gas will eventually match the additional initial outlay. Moreover, if Dr. Dooher is eager to make the consumer pay more at the gas pump, why should he be unwilling to complement that with a car that uses less gas?
Be that as it may, however, I don't believe that I would be taking my life in my hands by buying a more efficient car. Dr. Dooher takes issue with the claim that the disparity in vehicle sizes contributes largely to fatalities, and points out that "38 percent of fatalities occur in what are called single-vehicle crashes. SUVs are generally more protective of their occupants in both type of crashes." While the first statistic may be accurate, the idea that SUVs are more protective in single-car accidents is demonstrably false. According to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety's 2001 fatality facts for passenger vehicles, pickups and utility vehicles are proportionally more likely than cars to be in fatal single-vehicle crashes, especially rollovers. Moreover, the single-vehicle rollover death rate in 2000 was six times higher in light utility vehicles than in the largest cars.
Finally, Dr. Dooher assumes that automakers would be forced to build lighter cars to meet CAFE standards. This seems a little insulting to the creative minds at work developing new automotive technology. Already we have hybrid cars on the road, and there's no reason to suspect that these and other alternative vehicles would necessarily weigh less, or present more risks, than their conventional internal-combustion-powered siblings.
With all due respect, I would have to see more evidence than Dr. Dooher provides before I would be convinced that raising CAFE standards is dangerous, except perhaps to the profit margins of car manufacturers.
Tyrants, Despots, etc.
To the Editor,
Another Western commentator misses the point. I refer to your article "Electoral Engineering: Robert Mugabe stole the election in Zimbabwe. Will his neighbors let it stand?" by Sasha Polakow-Suransky. The article seeks to explain, amongst other things, why a number of African states have endorsed the Zimbabwe presidential election, which is widely condemned as neither free nor fair in the West.
I really don't believe this apparent schism has much to do with race or colonialism. The point Polakow-Suransky seems to miss completely, as do many other Western commentators, is that African states who claim Mugabe's election is legitimate are mostly ruled by leaders and parties not so much different from Mugabe and his ruling ZANU-PF party.
Considerable violence was directed against opposition supporters in the last Kenyan election, which also has a monolithic ruling party that has never been out of power. Tanzania has a ruling party that has, for most of its life, presided over a one-party state where opposition was entirely proscribed. Namibian President Sam Nujoma has changed the country's constitution so that he can serve a third term, and Amnesty International has reported many instances of killings and torture of dissidents.
There is no doubt in my mind that if these ruling parties face the real prospect of losing an election, much more flagrant nastiness, as evident in Zimbabwe, would occur. There is a definite perception amongst first-generation ruling elites in post-colonial Africa that, having prevailed in anti-colonial struggles, they are now entitled to govern their countries on a never-ending basis. Elections should only endorse superannuated ruling parties, not permit their replacements.
On this basis, the West's refusal to legitimize the flawed Zimbabwe election is hugely threatening to many African governments, as judging election results by objective criteria may create problems for their own legitimacy in the future. And just like Mugabe, Nujoma and others like to see themselves as part of a hereditary rulers' club whose members are entirely entitled to govern. In South Africa and throughout the West, there is much -- and justifiable -- celebration over the fact that white rule has ended. Yet in the run up to the South African elections, many strongholds of the now ruling African National Congress (ANC) were no-go areas for opposition parties. And in addition to ANC casualties, ANC supporters also killed many opponents.
The end of colonial rule was only the first step in the democratization of Africa, without which we have no future. Democracy will only consolidate in African countries when ruling parties, facing the real possibility of defeat, allow free and fair elections and vote counting with independently verifiable integrity. Interestingly, in South Africa, where lackluster President Thabo Mbeki is ever ready to accuse Western critics of racial prejudice, this test still has to be passed; the mask may yet slip. On this basis the West should not give too much credence to the opinions of certain African governments. It should, instead, at all times make plain what it considers acceptable democratic standards to be, and take steps to further isolate the government of Robert Mugabe.
Simphiwe Mandlakhe Buthelezi
South Africa
More Energy Expenditure
To The Editor:
On September 11, our chronic energy crisis became critical. According to Amory B. Lovins and L. Hunter Lovins's two-part article (Jan. 28 and Feb. 11), the solution is simple, apolitical and painless: "Policy tweaking" can turn gas-guzzling America into an energy-efficient nirvana. "Superwindows" and "hypercars" can undo Saudi dependence, stop global warming, banish nuclear reactors, and save our dwindling wilderness -- without raising fuel taxes.
This notion -- that U.S. society can keep energy cheap and nevertheless become vastly more energy-efficient -- is the Lovinses' central thesis, yet they fail to support it. By their own admission, the 15 percent fall in oil use from 1979 to 1985 -- the only significant such drop in 30 years -- "was spurred by high and rising energy prices." Though the Lovinses also cite 1996-99, when energy consumption increased only one-fourth as much as something they call "the economy," that's actually a counter-example because oil usage, the nub of the energy problem, grew 6 percent during that time. The need now, of course, is to reduce oil use, not just relative to some metric of economic activity, but absolutely.
Similarly, while it is heartening that California used 5 percent less electricity last year (the 14 percent reduction cited by the Lovinses was peak usage for one month), most of the savings came not through efficiency but from old-fashioned conservation -- reduced lighting and air-conditioning -- induced by crisis conditions and higher prices.
Even granting that a handful of factories and municipalities may have saved energy without higher fuel prices, this proves only that exceptional cases do occur. Every so often, a charismatic principal can turn around a failing inner-city school despite 35 kids per class. But duplicating that success in thousands of schools has proven elusive, absent structural reforms like smaller classes. Similarly, there is no way to promote energy efficiency on a mass scale as long as both gasoline and driving are systematically subsidized.
Amory Lovins first gained prominence in the 1970s, a period of rising energy prices, as the justly celebrated wizard of a movement that sought not only to save the environment but also to democratize the energy sector. But in the long retreat since those heady days, his program, and that of the mainstream "green" groups, has devolved to inviting the public to sit back and watch while policy wonks engineer energy efficiency, one "end-use" at a time.
This strategy of "armchair conservation" has won a few real victories, e.g., more efficient refrigerators. But its piecemeal nature and apolitical coloration have permitted at least an equal number of much bigger disasters, such as the tens of millions of absurdly outsized SUVs that now account for a million barrels a day of excess gasoline consumption.
To really solve our energy crisis -- to actually reduce usage rather than just have it grow slower than the fictitious entity called GDP -- will require charging a social price for energy via much higher fuel taxes (rebated pro rata for progressivity). A popular movement to achieve this may be hard to imagine, but it is a more plausible proposition, particularly after Sept. 11, than the Lovinses' chimerical prescription.
Sincerely,
Charles Komanoff
Komanoff Energy Associates
