JRscooby wrote:
Groover wrote:
"3 decades later, air in most places is cleaner, and a lot more cars driving a lot more miles. It is a fact the pollution controls have helped.
Now was the auto industry and technology ready for the regulations? Bell no! My '73 Nova burned nearly twice as much gas as my '72 Super Cheyenne. But because of market forces and government regulations ICE cars run much cleaner, and burn much less fuel."
I agree that we are better off with current technology than what we had in the 1960's but there is an irony in this statement. By forcing control of selected emissions but ignoring others we ruined gas mileage for about 15 years and greatly accelerated global warming which now is the most intractable problem to deal with. To keep those gas guzzlers going we imported a lot of fuel and exchanged a lot of our wealth to those oil producing countries, damaging our economy and enriching many who have used it to harm us.
I would have greatly preferred doing like most other countries and first going straight to the source of the problem by taxing oil consumption in a meaningful way. Not a sudden slam but well planned and scheduled to phase in over 10-15 years so that everyone new what was coming and could plan for it. What we got instead were cars like my mother's 1978 Chrysler that dipped as low as 2mpg around town in cold weather. Sometimes forcing change too quickly just creates more problems.
I see irony in saying we should have slow change. For example you youngsters may not know it, and likely will not read what I say because history is not taught in schools, and is not allowed on this site. But at one time a evil organization called OPEC proved to the world they could pretty much destroy the economies of the world. The man that was president at that time put solar panels on the roof of the White House. How much more developed would the solar industry be if a major consumer like US government put it's power behind it for 40 years? Where would the EV industry be now if the next president would of said "In 10 years 25% of cars bought by Gov will be EV. Any company that can't supply the EVs will not supply the ICE vehicles? That would of made a market for millions of EVs every year for the last 30 years.
But instead, remove the panels from WH, and make sure the power of OPEC is returned to the oil companies.
I am very flattered that you think that I am a youngster. If that fits me then you must be geriatric. OPEC is the primary organization that I referred to as the beneficiary of the poor decisions that were made in the 1970s. That same President that put up the solar panels on the White House as a symbolic move made a lot of other poor decisions that led to both a lot global warming and his removal after one term, even though the two weren't yet connected.
The way I see it is that our nation has a phobia of attacking the
root source of much of our problems which simply put is fuel consumption. The best way to do that is through a fuel tax, not in addition to other taxes but in lieu of them. Then let capitalism work. Virtually every other nation has done that and has a lot more to show for their efforts than we do.
