CAFE Standards, Global Warming, and the Wonder of the Automobile

1952 Volkswagen Beetle

The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it,

the world, and those who live in it;

for he has founded it on the seas,

and established it on the rivers.

Psalm 24:1-2

I am a car guy.

I have always been a car guy.

Cars are part of my earliest memories. The first car I remember in our family was a Renault 4CV. That was followed by a string of Volkswagens, a Volvo 544, a Falcon, and a series of 2-stroke Saabs.

When I need to figure out when something happened, I date it by recalling what car we owned, or what car I was driving or what car someone else was driving or maybe remembering some car I saw on the way.

When I show people the historic photographs of our old church building on Main Street. I always ask, “Do you know the best thing about this picture?” Of course, they just stare blankly because it is a very ordinary photograph of our old and architecturally unremarkable education building, Colby Hall. 

Then I point to the very small image of a car parked in the street. “That,” I say in the way that I imagine anyone would speak of something miraculous, “is an XK 120.” And then I launch into an enthusiastic explanation of the Jaguar  XK 120, completely undeterred by the fact that almost no one ever matches my enthusiasm. Or reverence.

Given my history, you might think that I would be happy about the Trump administration deciding to roll back the Obama CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) standards, but I’m not.

That’s because although I have been a car guy since I was a little boy, as an adult I am now also an environmentalist (it’s that pesky Christian ethics thing about caring for creation and environmental stewardship) and the environment trumps the car stuff.

Especially now, when the world is literally burning up.

I am on vacation in Georgetown, Maine right now. It’s late afternoon. We are less than two miles from the Atlantic Ocean and it’s 90 degrees here. And it seems like it’s been 90 degrees forever. 

And this is not normal.

And it’s lots warmer almost everywhere else in the United States. And there’s a heat wave in Scandinavia. And a drought in Australia. And California is actually on fire.

A hot few days in the summer does not prove that global warming is real any more than a snowstorm in the spring proves that it’s not. But the global trends look suspicious. 

Then there’s the lobsters. They are migrating north toward the colder water. As Elaine says, “You can’t argue with a crustacean.”

Those who defend the relaxed CAFE standards argue that automobile emissions in the United States are a very small fraction of the global carbon footprint. But they are still one of the largest single things we can regulate. And this does not seem like the time to move in the wrong direction.

But there’s more.

The relaxed standards will cost more money, because the savings in manufacturing costs will be more than offset by increased fuel costs over the life of the vehicle. It will result in job losses and it will cause us to lose a competitive edge in the global marketplace.

The big thing is the environment. And the second thing is the economy. But it’s also about the cars.
The first cars produced in response to the energy crisis and the new emissions and safety standards of the 1970’s were truly terrible cars. They were slow, ugly, and not very fuel efficient. Since then we have been on a remarkable trajectory. Today’s cars are better in every way, and much of that improvement has been in response to government mandates in the United States and around the world.

Our 1952 VW Beetle was adorable. And on a good day it could get 25 mpg. Compared to the average of all cars at the time, that was pretty impressive. But the top speed was less than 70 mph, and that was downhill. With a tailwind. And it’s best not to think about crash safety.

By contrast, the 2012 V6 Mustang that sits in my driveway consistently gets better than 30 mpg on the highway (more than 34 mpg on one memorable trip to Maine). It has airbags and crumple zones. And it’s very fast. 

For comparison, the 1969 Mustang that Steve McQueen drove in “Bullitt” had a 390 cubic inch V8. It would do zero to 60 mph in just 5.7 seconds and could run the quarter mile in 14.1 seconds.

That's very fast.

According to the road test people, that would make it just a few ticks slower (s-l-o-w-e-r) than a 2012 V6.

And Steve never got 30 mpg.

Thank you for reading. Your thoughts and comments are always welcome. Please feel free to share on social media as you wish. 

We Belong to a World Community

“Then the kingdom of heaven will be like this. Ten bridesmaids took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom. ²Five of them were foolish, and five were wise. ³When the foolish took their lamps, they took no oil with them; ⁴but the wise took flasks of oil with their lamps. ⁵As the bridegroom was delayed, all of them became drowsy and slept. ⁶But at midnight there was a shout, ‘Look! Here is the bridegroom! Come out to meet him.’ ⁷Then all those bridesmaids got up and trimmed their lamps. ⁸The foolish said to the wise, ‘Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out.’ ⁹But the wise replied, ‘No! there will not be enough for you and for us; you had better go to the dealers and buy some for yourselves.’”

Matthew 25:1-9

In a recent column, Nicholas Kristof observes that, “In upper-middle-class suburbs on the East Coast, the newest must-have isn’t a $7,500 Sub-Zero refrigerator. It’s a standby generator that automatically flips on backup power to an entire house when the electrical grid goes out.”

I’m jealous.

We didn’t lose power for more than a few seconds during Super Storm Sandy, but folks across town, just a few miles away, were without electricity for more than a week. That’s nothing compared to what happened in New York and New Jersey, but it does make you think. Standby generators are not cheap. It’s easy to spend over $10,000, but for many families, it’s worth it. Power outages are only fun for a short time.

There are at least two problems here. One is the increase in extreme weather caused by global warming. That is a long term problem that needs to be addressed (and it is becoming a crisis sooner than expected). The other problem is our infrastructure, and specifically, the electrical grid. In 2009 the American Society of Civil Engineers examined our electrical grid and gave it a grade of D+. The World Economic Forum ranks our electrical infrastructure as 25^th in the world, down from 8^th in 2003-4. Remarkably, neither global warming nor infrastructure got very much attention during the presidential campaign.

This points to an underlying problem: When it comes to major issues we lack a sense of community. In the language of kindergarten progress reports, “we don’t play well with others,” and we don’t know how to share.

I don’t criticize the people who are buying generators, but from a national or global perspective it makes no sense. It’s inefficient and it increases pollution. Ironically, it addresses the problems caused by climate change by adding to the conditions that cause climate change.

But this is where we are in America. Community services are being replaced with private alternatives. Rather than pay for services with higher taxes, we leave it to individuals.

If you are worried about crime, you can live in a gated community with private security. If the public schools have problems, you can send your kids to a private school. If the roads are crumbling, you can buy a bigger SUV. If public parks and recreation areas are not maintained, you can buy a home on the beach. But these “work arounds” only work if you have a lot of money.

We need to think hard about what it means to be a community, rather than a collection of individuals who happen to live in the same country (and on the same planet).

Climate Change and Hurricane Sandy

The waters swelled so mightily on the earth that all the high mountains under the whole heaven were covered; ²⁰the waters swelled above the mountains, covering them fifteen cubits deep.

Genesis 7:19-20

Roger Boisjoly died suddenly last winter in his sleep. He had been diagnosed with cancer a few weeks before that, but his death was unexpected. In 1986 he was an engineer working for Morton Thiokol, a major contractor for the Space Shuttle Challenger. He had argued vociferously against the launch in January of 1986 because his research showed that the seals at the joints of the multi-stage booster rockets were subject to failure in cold temperatures. With launch temperatures predicted to be around thirty degrees Fahrenheit, Boisjoly believed it was not safe to launch. Tragically, he was right. Boisjoly spent the last decades of his life addressing engineering students on ethical decision-making.

Dan Miller, an engineer and climate change expert has compared climate change to the Challenger disaster. In their eagerness to keep the launch on schedule, NASA managers asked Boisjoly and a small number of other engineers at Thiokol to prove that the shuttle would blow up before they would be willing to cancel the launch. Miller points out that they were asking the wrong question. “They should have asked for assurance that the flight would be safe in order to launch.”

Similarly, the climate change skeptics argue that the vast body of data showing evidence of manmade climate change is not conclusive “proof.”

The computer models produced by climate change scientists have predicted an increase in extreme weather events as a result of global warming. The devastation of Hurricane Sandy is consistent with this pattern. That doesn’t “prove” that the largest storm in recorded history was caused by climate change, but it does make one wonder.

In an exchange with Andrew Revkin in the New York Times on line, Miller writes:

“Extremely Hot Summers (“3-sigma” events) have increased 50X (5000%) in the past 50 years. There is 4% more water vapor in the atmosphere than 50 years ago. Average ocean temperatures have increased (90% of global warming energy goes into the ocean). The Arctic sea ice just reached its lowest level in thousands of years and in a few years you will be able to sail a boat to the North Pole for the first time in human history.

“These documented impacts all affected the strength, scale, and direction of Hurricane Sandy. No one is saying that a Hurricane Sandy would not have happened if not for climate change. But I believe there is little doubt that the record-breaking scale and potential destructiveness of Sandy is due in large part to the amplifying effects of warmer ocean temperatures, higher atmospheric moisture content, and unusual Arctic weather patterns.

“Like the Space Shuttle Challenger’s NASA managers, waiting for scientific “proof” of disaster, rather than taking prudent (and economically beneficial) steps to avert disaster, only guarantees that our children will face catastrophic consequences.”

Climate change was one of many topics ignored in the presidential debates. But it is something we cannot ignore. One of the meteorologists predicting the devastating effects of Hurricane Sandy reported on a conversation he had with a coastal resident as the storm was approaching. The man complained that the meteorologists were always hyping the next big storm and he saw no need to evacuate his home. The meteorologist said his response was approximately, “Do what the emergency management people are telling you to do, and if they are wrong you can call up and yell at me on Tuesday.”

We only have one planet. We don’t have a place to go if this one becomes uninhabitable. Maybe the 99% of scientists who believe that global warming is real are mistaken. Maybe the effects of global warming have been exaggerated. But their predictions have been accurate up to this point, and it is long past time for us to do something about it.