Clunkers and the Climate.

Cash for Clunkers, a billion spent so far, two more billion maybe on the way from Congress. 250,000 clunkers stacked up on the lots, engines destroyed, waiting to be melted down for scrap or taken apart for parts.

Where does this put us with climate change?  Well, the scientists are pretty good with number crunching, and they explain that the dead cars got worse mileage than the new cars, sure, but compared to the size of the problem, it's not a big deal. Americans will burn around 72 million fewer gallons of gasoline as a result of this publicly funded effort. But get this, that is not much Compared to what they will burn. subtract 250,000 clunkers from 260 million vehicles in the american car fleet.  So in terms of carbon emissions, while the people who ditched a clunker, and replaced it with a fuel efficient car, will each reduce their carbon emissions by around 3 tons per year, the carbon reduction only will equal around one hour of american national carbon output. Wow, that is rather pitiful, yes?

Now obviously, many readers are going to look at this and say, why bother doing the cash for clunkers then, it accomplishes almost nothing. But keep in mind, it was never about climate change, that was just a very minor beneficial by product. it was about stimulating the economy, especially car manufacturers. In that regard, the results are probably sunstantially more impressive than the green results. And I am not going to whine about it. People have to have jobs. Oh yeah, of course, many denialists think that the Climate Conspiracy is about destroying the US economy just for thrills. Listen, our economy just got taken to the edge of the cliff in a process that had absolutely nothing to do with climate change, and it was not thrilling, thanks just the same.

Even so, the carbon equation is worth noticing. Look, at least it is a net REDUCTION in carbon footprint. Remember back in the Bush administration, when Congress passed a tax rebate for Hummers used by small businesses? Guess what, that was public funding to actually intentionally GROW the national carbon footprint. And it was very effective. Lots of SUVs were sold. Some of them may be among the dead clunkers, come to think of it.

The larger point here is not that we need to give up on addressing climate change. The point here is that it is a bigger challenge than many of us are willing to face. The fault is not in the stars, but in ourselves. If one to three billion dollars of federal funds is adequate to make a measurable, but not massive, improvement in our carbon emissions, here is my question. Why do so many conservatives argue that the marketplace is going to fix this on its own? Get real. Without governmental action to create incentives and disincentives in the marketplace, ain't gonna happen.

Of course, many conservatives, at least here on gather, do not argue that the marketplace will deal with climate change.
No, they argue either that climate change is not a big problem, or that climate change in fact does not even exist. Sorry, not going to dignify that one with a response.