Auto Mania

Auto Mania : Cars, Consumers, and the Environment

“…Auto Mania explores developments that touched the environment”. Written by Naval Academy history professor Tom McCarty. The book examines all aspects of how the auto industry effects the environment through its whole life cycle of raw materials, production, use, and finally disposal.

The emphasis is on toxic problems, and less is said about carbon emissions or global warming. Very little is said about traffic safety.

The whole book is very even-handed as you would expect from a historian. His treatment of the National City Lines affair where GM bought up electric streetcar lines and shut them down illustrates this: “…(the) tale rapidly passed into American folklore as the principal reason for America’s automobile dependence. there is no question that GM worked hard and successfully to destroy electric streetcar systems, but this perspective needs to be tempered by the recognition that streetcar systems were unpopular with the riding public and in long-term decline before GM helped the process along”.

On tailpipe pollution, he details how automakers first denied there was any problem and then stalled as long as possible, resisting regulation at every turn. He points out that it is primarily the American automaker tha have this reflexive disdain for regulation: “The Japanese automakers although not in favor of government regulation per se, took the regulations in their stride, tried to anticipate future requirements, and strove to meet them. The American automaker, by contrast, screamed bloody murder. The American tendency to view business and government as natural adversaries and to treat the question of government regulation as part of a life-or-death struggle over sacred principles rather than as a matter-of-fact attempt to reduce unwelcome side-effects [i.e. externalities] ill served the American people“. (emphasis added)

He also points out that consumers will brook no inconvenience or limits on their activities — e.g. driving less. In their minds the problem rests solely with auto manufacturer, not its use or user. Technological fixes, as was forced by regulations ~ 1970 were the only acceptable solutions.

There is a chapter about the SUVs fad of the 1980s and 90s “The Riddle of the Sport Utility Vehicle”. It is based heavily on Keith Bradsher’s book High and Mighty. Though he discusses car CAFE, and that SUVs were initially exempted, then later given their own, laxer, standard — he doesn’t draw a connection between the squeeze on cars from CAFE. He does point out, with little comment, the (toxic) problem: “…regulatory exceptions permitted them to emit more hydrocarbons and nitrogen oxides [two toxics that form smog/ozone]. As a consequence, some SUVs emitted as much as five and a half times more smog-causing pollutants per mile than cars. By 1997…the emissions from the sixty-five million light trucks already on the road equaled those from 125million cars”. I might add that someday, 2009 according to current regulations but with the auto industry who knows?, light trucks are supposedly going to get to (toxic) emission parity with cars (see so-called tier 2 emission standards). What about the decades and tens of millions of these vehicles emitting excessive pollution?

On toxic tailpipe pollution he refers to the oft-cited and highly-regarded study “Ozone and Short-term Mortality in 94 US Urban Communities, 1987-2000” (Phoenix was one of them!) published in JAMA 17, Nov 2004, “…for some of these people , the exposure to elevated ozone levels pushed them over the edge and killed them”. His criticism is scathing: “When most people chose to continue to drive, especially on those days when temperature and weather condition made the formation of ozone from automobile emissions more likely, they also chose that some people in their community would die sooner than otherwise”.

The story of leaded gasoline is truly sickening. GM had a big role in this, and even moreso ongoing through its ownership in Ethyl. Was GM’s role in adopting the catalytic converter, necessitating the elimination of leaded fuel, in the early 1970’s some sort of redemption?

The role of UAW at joining management in obstructing regulations beginning in the 1970s also bugs me. But may be some sort of karmic payback for their now anemic union that the things they wanted like higher toxic emissions and no fuel economy improvements eventually drove GM and Ford practically bankrupt in the mid 2000’s. Whatever, companies like Honda have nothing to fear from fuel economy and emissions standards are thriving.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *