Beam me to Planet Gore !
Posted on 05/20/2009 2:27:02 PM PDT by grundle
The Obama administration’s proposed mileage standards that will be announced today may kill more Americans at a faster rate than the Iraq War — his signature issue in the 2008 presidential campaign.
Obama’s standards will require automakers to meet a 35 miles-per-gallon standard by 2016 — four years earlier than the same standard imposed by the Energy Security and Independence Act of 2007.
As discussed in my new book “Green Hell,” the only way for carmakers to meet these standards is to make smaller, lighter and deadlier cars.
The National Academy of Sciences has linked mileage standards with about 2,000 deaths per year. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates that every 100-pound reduction in the weight of small cars increases annual traffic fatalities by as much as 715.
In contrast in the more than six years since the Iraq war began, there have been 4,296 deaths among American military personnel.
And what will be gained by the new mileage standards?
The Natural Resources Defense Council said that the 35 MPG standard would save about one million gallons of gas per day. So how does that savings balance against the 2,000 fatalities per year that the National Academy of Sciences says are caused by those same lighter cars?
For the sake of being utilitarian, let’s generously assume that the mileage standards reduced the price of gasoline by $1. That would translate to daily savings of $1 million. Is that savings worth killing more than five people per day, plus other non-fatal injuries and property damage?
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency – for the purposes of risk assessment – values a single human life at $6.9 million dollars. So under the new mileage standards, it would cost about $35 million per day in human lives (not including non-fatal injuries) to save $1 million in gas.
There’s also another lesson hidden in the proposed standards — one that applies to businesses trying to game global warming legislation.
Carmakers lobbied hard against overly stringent mileage standards in the 2007 energy bill, finally negotiating with Congress a compromise standard they thought they at least had a chance to meet. President Obama has now pulled the rug out from under the carmakers and their 2007 deal.
This ought to serve as a lesson for businesses trying to negotiate a climate deal they think (hope) they can survive. Rest assured that as soon as business groups agree to a climate deal, the greens and the Obama administration will go to work the next day figuring out ways to bulldoze the deal in order to make greenhouse gas limitations more stringent and more expensive.
Businesses often operate under the mis-impression that they can cut lasting win-win, compromises with environmental groups on public policy. But such dealing is an impossibility since the greens are ideologically driven and won’t be happy until capitalism is stamped out.
The greens are not interested in compromise. Like blood in the water to sharks, compromise by businesses signals its weakness and vulnerability, and, therefore, opportunity for the greens.
It is no big secret that the same people who are imposing these eco-deathtraps on us place little or no value on human life, unless the human happens to be a convicted serial murderer whom they want to save from the death penalty.
Less for ‘Obamacare’ to pay for. /s
Well this isn’t quite true, IF cars begin being made en masse out of carbon fiber. A carbon fiber cars weight is insanely light, yet stronger than steel, and would more than be able to meet the mileage requirements without sacrificing safety.
However, it is unrealistic that we will be able to do this in 7 short years, AND lord knows what the overall impact will be economically from the reduction of steel in auto manufacturing as a result.
Let’s put it in terms the Rats can understand:
For every 100 pounds taken off a small car for purposes of fuel economy, as many as 715 TAXPAYERS responsible for paying taxes to the US GOVERNMENT to fund Democratic VOTE BUYING SCHEMES may be killed in automobile accidents annually.
But can we stop with the safety wuss stuff? Small cars are only dangerous to the extent they share the road with larger vehicles being driven incompetently.
I suggest you find the video of a crash test between the Smart Fortwo and the small Mercedes C-Class.
The Fortwo went airborne.
The author should add in the non-lethal injuries. The health care and disability costs alone would be staggering.
Air bags can only compensate a little bit. At some point, physics dictates that subcompacts lose in most collisions.
And how much more will these “super plastic cars” cost to make?
So only the clown cars will be driven safely?
bookmark
Source: gatewaypundit
I have solder that it takes a miracle to make a joint with, thanks to these people. The amount of lead that was evident from a joint, once the oxide skin had developed, was totally negligible. That didn’t matter to them, the ‘at least we’re trying to do something’ crowd.
We turn on the faucet to fill up the sink to wash the dishes and it takes 3 minutes to fill because they mandated 3/8ths inch pipe for all fixtures. We have to flush each toilet twice to keep them from developing an odor like a Port-O-Potty thanks to these fools.
I have several new gas cans that are supposed to be no drip. I have spilled more gasoline in the last year since I bought them than in the 50 years since I started using gas operated tools, thanks to these people.
A year ago, I bought a ceiling fan for my kitchen at Home Depot, a chain of hardware supply stores. It had standard light sockets. I bought another fan to replace a chandelier about 10 feet away from the original one. It had the name Hampton Bay. It was the same model as the first. After I removed the chandelier and mounted the second fan, I was prepared to put the ‘Reveal’ light bulbs into it. The light bulb base was considerably smaller. I went back to Home Depot looking for the same fan as the first. They all were this E-17 base, the same as I bought. I looked on the internet for Hampton Bay. I got a phone number, and after pressing ‘1’ for English, and a serious of other steps, I got to speak to a real person. I asked if I could buy a fan with standard light socket bases. They told me they don’t make them anymore. They are heading toward the outlawing of the incandescent bulb by a mandate of Congress. I went back to the Home Depot to see if they had any of the old-fashioned light bulb bases in stock. They said they didn’t. They did it here again. Soon, you won’t be able to get a standard light bulb for your 3-way lamp or any other fixture, thanks to our Congress.
Now, Barack Obama is issuing a madate that our cars must get 35 miles to a gallon of gas. I remember fondly when something like this required a law according to the constitution. What the heck happened? The last mandated mileage limit was done by the Congress by law. Have we truly lost our Republic? Do we have a dictatorship? Was there a revolution and I missed it? By mandate, he is going to try to contol an aspect of private industry. I hope the Ford Corporation will challenge him in court. The rest are in his pocket because of the bailout money the accepted. The Democratic Party has lost it in its backing this doofus!
It would have done him well for him to have taken a couple of physics and chemical courses for electives in college; then he wouldn’t sound so much like Al Gore. You can get so much work(energy for a mechanical device) out of a unit of fuel. After that, there is nothing else. Unless you cover an Acme cart with a tarp, and fire it with a lawnmower engine, 35 mpg is not doable. You have to feed a certain displacement engine with an adequate amount of fuel to just keep it running, let alone get any work out of it.
Let’s just hope that there a few genuine people out there in the media who report what is really going on, or Kruschev’s prediction of us destroying it from within will be prophetic.
They don't care because statistically, Rats and All other voters would most likely be affected in percentages nearly equal to their percentage in public.
In other words, the vote would still come out the same, so who cares if more die?
That's RAT logic, not mine.
Very well said, maxwellsmart. Great post.
Recently a local county councilman was grandstanding during a council meeting on the topic of requiring automated sprinkler systems in all new homes. He was interrogating a representative of the local builders group and asked him, “What is your acceptable kill rate?”
To his credit, the lobbyist rejected the unfair rhetorical device and made a good accounting for himself, but I was struck by the blatant dishonesty of the question. The leftys on the blog saw no problem with the question.
So I say; “Good for the goose - good for the gander”
Someone should put the O’Bumbler on the spot and ask him, “What is your acceptable kill rate?” in demanding these absurd requirements. How many people are you OK with killing in order to save a few gallons of gasoline? How many lives are you willing to ruin?
This same twisted logic has mandated we fill our homes with toxic mercury laden CFL bulbs to save us from dying from non existent global warming.
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