Past failures with energy policy should inform present decisions
The Pew Fuel Efficiency report we discussed yesterday has more than just a dramatic graph. Inside the report are a number of major criticisms of the automakers and government for their roles in putting the brakes on efficiency policies in the 80’s and 90’s.
Many of the excuses for inaction heard from many efficiency opponents today are the same heard in the early 70’s when Congress was deciding how to react to the OPEC crisis. Apparently, domestic automakers complained that fuel economy requirements would force them to build a fleet of subcompacts. “In 1974, Ford testified the standards could ‘result in a Ford product line consisting …of all sub-Pinto-sized vehicles.’ Congress passed the law anyway, and today Ford’s top seller is its F- Series pick-up.”
With this new legislation, as we noted yesterday, between 1975 and 1985, passenger vehicle mileage doubled, but by the year 2000, with gas prices much lower than the peaks seen in the early 1970’s, the average car and truck sold actually went one mile less on each gallon of gas than it did 10 years earlier.
The report notes that one of the reasons for this regulatory atrophy was that “In the mid-1980s, Ford and GM… lobbied the Reagan Administration to lower the standard. [The Highway and Transportation Safety Board] complied, setting a 26 mpg standard for 1986, prompting Chrysler Chairman Lee Iacocca to declare, ‘We are about to put up a tombstone: Here lies America’s energy policy.’”
While it is interesting to learn the history behind our failed energy policy, the real reason to understand it, is so that we can avoid repeating our mistakes of the past again today. With a slowing economy and declining gas prices, we must be vigilant to ensure we don’t recommit ourselves to an untenable future in return for an easier present.
Graphic from Pew Campaign for Fuel Efficiency.
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