Last week, the House of Representatives passed another bailout of the automobile industry, though they did their best to disguise the bailout as a way to clean up our skies by giving people rebates (to the tune of $4,500) to buy more gas-efficient vehicles. Matt Margolis touched on the program known as "Cash for Clunkers" in a great post about this administration's statist policies when it comes to car manufacturers. How misguided is this bailout in disguise? First off, it may have environmental backlash, as the Heritage Foundation makes clear in a blog post about the proposed program:
Staying on in the issue of environmentalism, the pollution costs of
constructing a car could exceed the polluting costs of running a car.
One study by
“Environment and Forecasting Institute in Heidelberg, Germany, looked
at the full impact of a “medium-sized car” driven for 13,000km a year
for 10 years. It concluded that the extraction of the raw materials for
each car alone produced 25 tonnes of waste and 922m cubic metres of
“polluted air”. This compared with 2,040m cubic metres of polluted air
for the full life-cycle of the vehicle, meaning that the manufacturing
stage was roughly responsible for 45%.” Although refuting studies say
the manufacturing is closer to 20 percent of the car’s total emissions,
a Carnegie Mellon study found “the manufacturing stage was responsible for 59% of all “toxics” (mercury, etc) released over the car’s full life-cycle.”
"Cash for Clunkers" is being sold as an environmental bill, not a bailout, which is why the hypocrisy behind increasing car manufacturing is important. I doubt many people behind this bill care whether or not the environment gets better or worse; they're just trying to gain "brownie points" with the environmentalist movement while also trying to give out more handouts to Big Auto. Will he bill even accomplish it's real primary objective of helping out American automakers? I agree with Sylvia Cochran when I say, I doubt it:
While it is true that the clunker bill could benefit the American auto
industry, it is highly unlikely that consumers will pass up
competitively priced foreign models from fiscally stable manufacturers,
where they do not have to worry about the American government backing
the warranties, and where dealerships will still be in business
tomorrow for repair work.