ht: Drudge
It's all screwed-up. And full of stupidity.
Those who designed the program are obviously stupid socialists more interested in ideological dogmatism than in rational real-worldliness.
And as for the supposed energy-savings and environmental friendliness, well, it's not that simple...
Michael Gerrard, director of Columbia Law School’s Center for Climate Change Law, said in a statement that the cash-for-clunker program is not a cost-effective way to reduce fuel use or greenhouse gas emissions. Any energy savings, he said, could take several years to realize, considering the time it takes the fuel savings from a new car to exceed the energy cost used to make it.
I'd add that more fuel-efficient vehicles will actually inspire drivers to behave in less-fuel-saving manners. They'll say, well, it's so much more efficient than my old, underpowered V8, this direct-injected, blown four-banger, so I can floor 'er all I want! Wheeeee!
And such fun, tire-shredding street-storming driving actually will use up nearly as much, as much or even more gas than would driving that early-Eighties LeSabre land yacht in the most fuel-efficient manner possible. Oh, yes... flooring it in my '06 Chevy Cobalt, with base-but-satisfactory 16-valve DOHC 2.2, on the highway turns her from a reasonably thrifty econo-coupe (when driven conservatively) into a Ferrari-like dead-dinosaur chug-a-lugger, I've noticed from enjoying a bit too much of the lovely, smooth surge of forward movement with the tach quickly slamming into redline and all 145 horses doing their thing...
So perhaps, fuel-efficiency-wise, the whole concept of trading in perfectly functional older vehicles isn't such a great idea after all. Unless your older vehicle was a ticking time bomb, a potential deathtrap with a road-salt-ravaged underlying structure...
