Commenter Marc Tyler cc’d us on an email to President Obama with Marc’s ...

With no apologies to Farago for the title, we continue to round up reactions and arguments for/against cash for clunkers. If by now you haven’t seen that this is the most ill-begotten, shortcut-derived piece of legislation on Congress’s plate at the moment, then perhaps you need to read deeper.

First, John Voelcker over at GreenCarReports continues his patsyism for cash for clunkers. He goes after one of the environmental arguments against cash for clunkers, pointing out a Duke University study that claims to calculate just how much of an increase in mileage a car needs to offset the energy expended while producing the car. If the math behind the study escapes you for the moment, don’t worry: It’s simply not necessary. The study misses the point of the environmental argument that creating more and more new cars by artificially shortening the lifespan of old cars generates pollution and waste of energy, while keeping an old car on the road simply does not. The longer one can keep an old car on the road, the fewer hits the environment takes during a new car’s production.

As to John’s argument that it’s of no harm to the collector car world, I’ll point out as I’ve pointed out before: Of course cash for clunkers doesn’t threaten 1969 Camaros or any current collector car. Any idiot can see that crushing a collector car that’ll bring $15,000 at auction in exchange for a $4,500 voucher simply doesn’t make sense. And the wording of the bill prevents people from crushing inoperable parts cars. the danger to the collector car hobby is that future collectibles - those cars not currently considered collectible, but which may someday become so - will be crushed. Take the example of the Jeep Comanche. Unless you’re talking about the Eliminator variant, nobody currently considers the Comanche collectible, and I bet many people currently nursing one around will jump at the chance to turn theirs in for a $4,500 voucher. But when enough time has passed to allow people to see those trucks through the haze of nostalgia, they will become collectible, and if everybody crushes their Comanches now, nobody will enjoy these trucks in the future. And if nobody appreciates these vehicles, then they’ve become another soulless consumer product that we can just discard at whim, thus overflowing our landfills.

And as to the argument that cash for clunkers is voluntary and thus nothing to worry about, think back about three years, when everybody was buying houses with interest-only mortgages. Nobody forced people to make those stupid decisions - they were absolutely voluntary - but those mortgages were available, and greedy/impatient/nearsighted/ignorant people snapped those mortgages up. The same thing’s going to happen should cash for clunkers become law.

Moving right along, Sam Shaw over at Age of Pericles took some time to examine H.R.520, one of the three cash for clunkers bills that’s been formally introduced in Congress this year. He presented the bill in plain English and found that it doesn’t pose much of a threat to vehicles much older than 1984. But he does note how it will affect low-income families:

Many High Fuel Consumption Vehicles manufactured after 2002 still run reliably, but are worth less than the $4,500 offered via voucher. As such, no High Fuel Consumption Vehicles (read: SUVs and minivans which are great for carrying families) will be available for cash-strapped families already reeling from the recession for less than $4,500.

Looking forward to his analysis of S.247.

Commenter Marc Tyler cc’d us on an email to President Obama with Marc’s views on c4c:

Dear President Obama,

I’m writing today regarding the “Cash for Clunkers” program you recently expressed support for.   While superficially this may seem like an environmentally friendly program, the reality is more complicated.

If done properly, when a car is turned in, the voucher received must be for a vehicle with better fuel economy than its predecessor. This in itself may cause problems, as fleet milage has degraded in the last couple decades, so the older cars, in general are lighter and more fuel efficient than the newer, heavier ones. For instance, the 1993 Geo Metro XFI got city / highway mpg estimates of 53/48, the Toyota Yaris’ fuel economy numbers are 34/40. What could the owner of an old Geo trade in for? A Prius at  48/45? Will the Metro be exempt from any cash for clunkers program until a more economical vehicle comes along?

Not only will the new car have to get better milage than the old car, it will have to mitigate the tons of CO2 emissions embedded in the vehicle during its manufacture. The amount of CO2 released during a car’s manufacture may be as high as 30% of the carbon dioxide released in the life of the vehicle. This is yet another environmental hurdle to be overcome by the new vehicle.

I do understand that the Cash for clunkers programs are intended as a stimulus for the auto industry, not as an environmental program, although it has been marketed as green. I propose instead of subsidizing the top of the industry, which has shown itself to be a failing model, stimulate the auto industry from the bottom up, the ‘regular guys’ you so often mention in your speeches. Instead of replacing a perfectly serviceable fleet with a newer, and in many ways less efficient one, encourage entrepreneurs to maintain and improve the efficiency and safety of older vehicles. Look to Neil Young’s 1959 Lincoln Continental. The plug-in diesel electric hybrid gets 100mpg where previously it got 10, thanks to a small shop in Wichita Kansas.

Business cycles come and go, industries come and go, civilizations come an go, as ours surely will, but this is the only Earth we have. Although it may run counter to the big business model, I ask you to, in this case, think small, and keep in mind this model:

Reduce
Re-use
Recycle

Sincerely,
Marc Tyler

And we applaud Marc’s effort to bend President Obama’s ear.

Finally, satire blog Wine & Excrement holds no punches in its article titled Cash-for-clunkers plan expands to include charmless wives.

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