Rhinocrisy

As we’ve pointed out before here, average fuel economy in this country has been slipping for quite a while. This is not the result of any technological backsliding; in fact, cars have been getting more fuel-efficient over time, and trucks have remained relatively constant in their fuel-efficiency. So why has fuel efficiency been backsliding? Easy: the fleet has been transitioning towards a greater percentage of SUVs. In 1980 cars made up 80% of the U.S. fleet; in 2004 they make up 50%, with SUVs having taken up most of the difference. Why did this happen?

For years many conservative economists (and conservatives more generally) have been pushing the line that CAFE standards themselves are to blame: by exacting a heavier penalty on the light-duty fleet, consumers were encouraged to transition to SUVs, classified as light trucks and subject to lower standards.

But this is nuts. It’s absurd to suggest that consumers would be swayed to move to vehicles that cost on average between $31,000 and $48,000, far more than they would be paying for a passenger car. Especially when you hear what the actual CAFE penalty is: $5.50 for each tenth of a mile a manufacturer is over the standard, times the number of units sold. In other words, even if the manufacturer’s fleet average is a full 5 mpg above the standard, they need only increase the sticker price by $275 - not nearly enough to make SUVs competitive. And of course, this example is absurdly hyperbolic. Domestic manufacturers have never failed to meet CAFE standards, and the total penalties collected since 1983 amount to only $475 million - which amounts to a few tenths of a point on average.

Then there’s cars like the Hummer H2, entirely exempt from CAFE standards because it weighs more than 8,500 pounds. This is what’s known as “rewarding bad behavior”.

CAFE standards are applied separately to a manufacturer’s passenger and light-truck fleets. That is, a manufacturer must meet an average of 27.5 mpg for its passenger car fleet, and 20.5 mpg for its light-truck fleet in order to avoid penalties. So regardless of how many people move from one to the other, it’s the average efficiency of each fleet by itself that determines whether CAFE standards are met. Thus, even if fuel efficiency is improving in the passenger car fleet, overall fuel efficiency can drop. This encourages auto manufacturers to transmogrify their cars into light trucks by packing on weight and giving them removable seats so they can be defined as such. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration still lets manufacturers be the ultimate arbiter of this classification.

And within a fleet there’s reasonable evidence that CAFE is pretty good at distorting the market. Most manufacturers stick pretty close to CAFE standards despite market demands. Why should they do so when the penalty is so slight? A Congressional Budget Office study says:

while in theory manufacturers are free to pay a penalty in lieu of complying with CAFE standards, in fact, U.S. manufacturers invariably choose to comply. They do so, according to an automobile industry representative, to avoid or reduce the possibility of legal or public relations ramifications.

So actually, given the two-fleet rule, CAFE should push in the opposite direction and encourage people to buy more fuel-efficient passenger cars: say that consumers prefer gas-guzzling cars. In a normal market, these would be more plentiful, and thus cheaper. But a CAFE standard requires that manufacturers restrict the number of gas-guzzlers sold and push more efficient cars, in order to meet the required fleet average. This would make the undesired efficient cars even cheaper (less demand, more supply), and up the cost of gas-guzzlers (more demand, less supply).

So why did the fleet migrate towards SUVs? My preferred explanation is hubris, but there are other possible market-distorting explanations. For example, since 1997 there’s been a “tax loophole” allowing small businesses to deduct $25,000 of the cost of vehicles weighing over 6,000 pounds as a “business expense”. This loophole was upped to cover $75,000 of the cost in 2003 and extended for three years in October of 2004. That might have done a little bit to encourage sales of SUVs.

Creating a uniform standard would prevent this possibility. This was one of the recommendations of an NAS study that almost resulted in a uniform standard (27.5 mpg) for both fleets in 2001… but was overwhelmingly defeated.

There’s a whole host of other improvements to be made. For one, the “Gas Guzzler” tax, which penalizes cars with lower average assessed fuel efficiency, only applies to passenger cars; this could be extended to light trucks. CAFE credits - when manufacturers exceed standards for a year - could be traded and sold, encouraging companies to improve their efficiency. And, most straightforward, fuel economy standards could simply be raised (e.g. to 37.5 mpg for passenger cars and 29 mpg for light trucks, as proposed by Ed Markey of Massachusetts a few years ago). Between 1974 and 1985, fleet average fuel economy nearly doubled, from 12.9 mpg to 27 mpg. This was largely driven by technological improvements; there’s no reason this couldn’t be done again. All indications suggest we’re poised to do so. We just need a little nudge.

At some point in the past I became a free-speech absolutist. I think this stems somehow from my attitude towards interpersonal relationships and the observations I’ve made there. When you don’t talk about things, even if it means suppressing the bitter, hateful words you want to say, issues don’t get resolved. Bad feelings don’t go away, they curdle into resentment and anger. Speaking, on the other hand, is like surgery: momentarily painful, but ultimately vital for resolving misunderstandings or making clear irreconcilable differences. But even the latter is better, in the end; if there’s an uncomfortable knot digging into your side, why pretend it isn’t there?

So I’ve never been a fan of “hate speech” rules. I don’t see any value in criminalizing speech, especially when that comes so dangerously close to political speech. Observe the ADL and its casual use of the label “anti-Semitic” to describe a broad range of anti-Israeli rhetoric. There’s a slippery slope here.

And in general I don’t think this country has done well by burying its hate. We maintain our prejudices, but we’ve sewn our lips together so that any hint of it can’t sneak out. Prejudice doesn’t wax because master rhetoricians are cajoling us with their serpent’s tongues; it’s because there are spaces for it to grow into and fear for it to feed on. We gain nothing by forcing those spaces to be empty; they must be filled with speech (other kinds of speech) in order to destroy the loam in which prejudice grows. Making speech more difficult, making people leery of saying the wrong thing, is absolutely the wrong way to encourage and allow that speech.

Why I’m ranting about this: you’ll note up top that the Blogger toolbar contains a “Flag” icon. This is, according to Google, to report “hate speech”. Flight might be a good response to this policy.

Mostly, though, I’m annoyed that their awful coding is spoiling my layout.

I register absolutely no surprise at all at this story, about the hapless Jean Charles de Menezes, the Brazilian man shot dead by British cops in the days after the July 7 bombings in London. It seems that everything the British cops and eyewitnesses said - he was wearing a heavy jacket, he ran from the cops into the station, he jumped a turnstyle, he did not respond to police calls to stop - was a total fabrication. Classic CYA. +3 cynicism points for me. I’ll be waiting for the retractions from the chorus of complete jerks.

I’m not usually one for mindless gossip and Nelson Muntz-style ha-ha-ing, but this is deeply fucked up. Somehow I missed this. SOMEHOW THIS MAN IS STILL A SENATOR OF THE UNITED STATES. Fucking Pennacchio now.

It occurs to me that this sort of thing is now actually pretty prosaic. The political sphere is such a parade of the bizarre that someone who is not deeply neurotic and borderline schizoid is the frightening oddball. “What the hell is wrong with you? You have no deep character flaws! No hideous deformed skeletons in your closet! No eating disorders or morally scandalous secret pastimes! No idiosyncratic, alienating political or religious views! You, sir, are not fit to be a Congressman!“

As penance for my unforgivable advertising-related rant of yesterday, I present this eulogy of a bit of viral marketing.

You see, the Saab Corporation has decided that the corporate world has subsumed the individual, and we are in grave danger of being drowned in a big wide sea of Same. Thus, they urge you to Maintain Your Identity. Because, “You are different. So is Saab.”

You’d imagine that most people would respond to this sort of nonsense by flying into a violent rage and rushing to their nearest Saab dealership to bludgeon the hapless automobiles into their component parts with a heavy metal crowbar. I, however, respond with gratitude that they provide a space where we can learn how other people express their individual natures. Isn’t that great? Now evil fucking corporate ad execs can tell us how to be DIFFERENT, as well as how to conform! I’m also startled to see that all these individualists live lives remarkably free of profanity, drug use, public nudity and anti-establishment rhetoric. And none of them want to take the piss out of Saab, either! Awww.

I swear to god the following is true.

I found a new bottle of shampoo in my shower this morning, even wierder than the last one. It’s “Giovanni magnetic hair care” shampoo. It promises “Magnetically charged hair care for naturally beautiful hair”.

The blurb on the back says:

This dynamic shampoo’s cleansing power comes from deep within the earth. Magnetite, a polarizing mineral that infuses positive energy while repelling negative charges, combines with special cleansing and conditioning forces. Proteins fill in ravaged hair to smooth and soothe. With each shampoo, hair feels stronger, looks better. Micro-magnets expel oils and residues. Damage is repaired. Shine is an absolute blast. This is the positron effect of Energizing Shampoo.

On the front is one of Maxwell’s equations (only not):

And, yes, in the list of ingredients, they do indeed include “Magnetite (Fe₃O₄)”.

I really don’t know what to say.

Something that gets too little attention in our society is how much work we put into unnecessarily moving things around. I have been reminded of this recently as I lost 10 lbs unexpectedly upon departing grad school, becoming addicted to coffee, and leaving the food mecca of the Bay Area for the less nutritious and higher-stress life of Washington. Now, when I run, my knees hurt less and I go faster — because I have stopped carrying an extra 10-lb weight around.

To put it another way: When I see a bottle of Evian, I always see the bottle filled with ounces of golden, fragrant petroleum, with a thin film of delicious spring water lining the base of the bottle, and tiny figures inside, toiling over nothing. That is what $2.00 a liter buys. Transportation, refrigeration, and the labor of many people doing dull, unnecessary work. Unnecessary because anywhere that you can find Evian, you can probably find piped water. Pipelines are the most efficient conveyance known. They require no unskilled labor. Many operate on gravity. You get the point.

The latest Harpers’ Index does the math on obesity and points out that the net excess weight of people in the United States is more than equal to the weight of everyone in Los Angeles. So as we drive around, in cars, planes, bicycles, or whatever, we are using all this extra energy to transport lipids that would be better stored as preserved food than in our bodies.

Of course this amount pales beside the work we put into moving our conveyances. That is, the amount of energy we spend moving the machines that exist to move us. Miles per gallon in the American passenger vehicle fleet has dropped from 21.5 to 20.6 in the past 20 years.

Driving on an Interstate, I have to be extra-careful because I find myself routinely lost in reverie, staring at all the metal in motion. How much mass is moving! How much energy is being spent! How miraculous. It is beautiful if you don’t think too much about the peat bogs of Siberia.

Overcoming skepticism. Thank God the University of Washington is researching this. I’ve been noticing a serious excess of skepticism lately.

Concerned that the American public was at risk of using less gasoline than absolutely possible, the Bush Administration has taken decisive action to continue the shitstorm.

The Bush administration is expected to abandon a proposal to extend fuel economy regulations to include Hummer H2’s and other huge sport utility vehicles, auto industry and other officials say.

That old one went okay.