Surprised the clunker law question is turning into a thread again. When i was
working in economic analysis for Stanford Research in 1988 I did a project
for SoCal Edison which involved evaluating the SoCal Air Qual mgmnt Dist
SCAQMD regs. Two facts are frequently lost in the debate.
First, over fifty pct of all pollution (at least in SoCal) comes from mobile
sources (i.e. cars, trucks) so the air quality goals can not be met from only
reducing industry (stationary) sources, even if every plant shut down
tomorrow. Therefore to improve air quality car pollution must be reduced, in
some fashion or another by getting high-polluting cars (old and/or badly
maintained) off the road.
Second, while the industries can get short term relief in meeting their
reduction quotas either by shutting or retro-fitting plants or by buying
pollution credits in other ways (e.g. by paying to get old cars off the road)
in the long term they will have to fix the plants too, since their pollution
requirements rise year by year out to 2020.
This doesn't make me for or against clunker laws, just worth considering in
the debate.
Gary Anderson
71 MGBGT (meets pollution req'ts)
60 AH BN7 (just barely misses contemporary req'ts)
55 100M (not moving at all at present)
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