Green With Madness

Eric Peters writes at the American Spectator:

The Obama administration has apparently decided to slam shut -- and nail down -- the coffin lid on the U.S. auto industry. It was announced this week that the administration intends to give California and a handful of other states legal authority to impose their own mileage, emissions and fuel economy requirements -- requirements that may and probably will exceed federal standards. The auto industry -- already crippled by sales that are off as much as 30-50 percent from last year -- faces two equally unpalatable options: It will either have to either build two sets of cars for two different markets (California and the rest of the country) or make all their new vehicles meet the stricter "California standard" -- which will be both complex and costly. This is a devastating blow -- and one that the enfeebled U.S. auto industry probably cannot withstand...President Obama is neither an engineer nor a businessman -- having spent about a year of his entire career outside the government. So he probably doesn't understand that, in the first place, current-year cars are already close to emissions-free. Compared with a car built during the 1970s, a 2009 model year car produces virtually none of the noxious combustion byproducts (chiefly unburned hydrocarbons) that combine to form smog and reduce air quality. In fact, less than 2 percent of what comes out of the tailpipe is other than water vapor and carbon dioxide -- neither of which have any effect of air quality. But California regulators -- and now Obama -- want to go after that remaining 1-2 percent. No matter how expensive. An economist would call this pursuing diminishing returns. But Obama is not an economist; he is a politician -- and he knows that people (most people) will like the sound of what he is proposing. What they might not like, of course, is the price tag that will come with it....