The ridiculousness of what Glenn Reynolds has called the 'hairshirt' approach to environmentalism has turned a new corner. According to the article at Bloomberg, some nutter wants to outlaw cars that exceed 100mph:

"Fast, powerful cars within a few years may be outlawed in Europe, an idea that has been raised ostensibly because Ferraris and Porsches produce too much carbon dioxide. For those who abhor sports cars as vulgar symbols of affluence (along with vacation homes, furs and fancy jewelry), such a ban could be a two-fer: Saving the planet while cutting economic inequality."
(emphasis mine)

Firstly, taking someone's Ferrari away is most certainly not going to do a damn thing to cut economic inequality; and such an insinuation is either an attempt incite the class warriors or just petty pot-stirring. What banning these cars would most certainly mean is these people will spend their disposable income on something else. Maybe an exclusive vacation to Fiji - flying in a private jet, no doubt. Or maybe a few extra thousand square feet in their vacation home - that's soaking up gobs of energy all year round.

Secondly, this is an immature attempt at solving a problem, and maybe even a complete misdiagnosis of the problem itself. The problem is not sports cars, it's consumption. That being said, outlawing the relatively small number of exotics in the world would do little to curb consumption. We're talking about the smallest market (per capita) of car buyers, and the cars that are probably driven the least number of miles a year.

A funny little note - just about anything this side of a '73 Civic will hit 100mph. But we'll leave the absurdity of this guideline out, simple out of respect for the member of Parliament who's responsible for this brain fart.

A more viable solution would be to start bumping up our fuel efficiency standards. Via RFK Jr. in Outside Magazine, 11/2004 (one of my favorite quotes):

"Here's how you do it. If we raise fuel-efficiency standards by just one mile per gallon, we save two ANWR's full of oil over the projected 50-year life of the fields. If we raise them 2.7 mpg, that's more than all the oil we import from Iraq and Kuwait combined. If we raise standards by 8 mpg, we don't have to import one drop of Persian Gulf oil into this country. Fuel efficiency is an untapped resource. It's cheap oil."

The good thing about a progressive increase in fuel efficiency standards is that it would pull the automotive industry in conjunction with the recent push from consumers for more efficient vehicles. Give the industry time to learn what consumers want, and to innovate those wants into a quality product. Hell, Lotus has been making fuel efficient, relatively affordable (and immensely fun to drive, might I add) sports cars for years.

As an aside, I just used the words RFK Jr. and progressive in the same breath. Hey, a guy's allowed to dabble, right?

Posted by: shank at 11:06 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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