<< Without government regulation each of these companies would make cars that get 17 mpg and have no health standards. That's how they made them before government regulations. >>
Oh, please. The gov't does not regulate commerce (and God forbid the day it does). The people who buy the products do. Besides the gov't screws the enviroment more than the anyone else does in the first place. They just do it in less obvious ways, not exploited. Ever hear of the "love canal scandal"? An overview:Love Canal is actually a trench, rather than a canal, near Niagara Falls, New York. It was intended to be a canal but the project was abandoned in the early 20th century. From 1920 onward the trench was a trash and chemical disposal site. In 1942 the Hooker Chemical & Plastics Company, a subsidiary of Occidental Petroleum, purchased Love Canal.
<< The company buried its toxic wastes in the trench, and allowed the city of Niagara Falls and the U.S. Army to dump wastes there as well. Hooker took special pains with the waste material long before toxic wastes were a public issue, making sure it was buried in a way that prevented leaks.
In 1953 the Niagara Falls Board of Education decided it wanted to build a school on top of the trench. The Hooker executives refused to sell the property because of the buried wastes -- afraid that any construction would cause gases to escape.
But the Board of Education persisted and threatened to confiscate the property by eminent domain. And so Hooker agreed to sell Love Canal to the school board for $1 -- provided that the deed of sale included a prohibition on any construction over the buried toxic wastes. The school board agreed, promising to use that area only for a playground.
But within one year the government school board violated the contract and announced its intention to construct the school directly on top of the toxic wastes. Hooker protested publicly and vehemently, citing the danger involved. The school board ignored the warnings and built the school anyway. And the presence of the school soon led to the building of new homes around it.
By the 1970s the chemical wastes were leaking, and nearby residents complained of odors and fumes. A consulting company investigated and recommended a number of measures that might reseal the wastes and stop the leakage. But the city government ignored the recommendations.
Finally, in 1978 a state agency investigated and recommended closing the school, evacuating all pregnant women from the area, and banning the eating of home-grown vegetables. The state purchased and leveled 239 of the homes near the canal. Eventually, everyone in the Love Canal area was evacuated and relocated -- paid for by the state and federal governments.
The Love Canal scandal was widely publicized. Hooker Chemical Company was condemned by politicians, journalists, and the public as a heartless, irresponsible company for having dumped toxic wastes into Love Canal.
But no one seemed to want to ask the obvious and important question: why did the school board build on top of a trench that was known to contain toxic wastes -- especially in the face of Hooker's public warnings? And why did the government school board ignore the deed restriction that prohibited it from building over the wastes ñ a deed restriction that Hooker Chemical had insisted upon? And why was it that the wastes had never been a problem until the government decided to disturb them?
Hooker was forced to pay out over $200 million in settlements to residents and reimbursement to government agencies -- even though Hooker was the only entity involved that acted responsibly.
The true story of Love Canal was always available to any reporter who cared to know the truth. Hooker's protests against building a school there were a matter of public record. The city archives contained the deed of sale, showing the stipulation against building on the waste site. Old newspapers carried reports of the public hearings at which Hooker warned against building on the canal.
But at the time of the scandal, the networks and wire services relied for their "facts" on the politicians' self-serving accusations against Hooker Chemical & Plastics Company. The company's reputation never recovered.
Eventually, Eric Zuesse of Reason magazine dug up the truth and published it. But by then the press and the politicians had moved on to new examples of "corporate greed" and no one in the national press paid attention to Zuesse' findings.
The Love Canal affair may appear to be an unusual example, but only because you now know details about it that the general press doesn't usually report. Reporters always seem to believe the worst about private companies -- while assuming that only government agencies are interested in protecting the environment.
Meanwhile, the politicians have the greatest interest in exploiting any scandal by condemning private freedom and supporting increased government power.
But the truth is that government isn't the answer. Politicians and government administrators have no incentive to preserve government properties, because they have no stake in the future value of those properties. Private executives must answer to shareholders, and they must be able to show that company-owned properties aren't deteriorating in value.
So only private companies can be counted on to treat their properties carefully. >>
Furthermore:
<< The ravaging of government lands by politically connected companies has been well-publicized for years -- even if the press has ignored the fact that government managers shouldn't have allowed anyone to pollute government property.
But now evidence is coming to light of how badly government itself is polluting its own property.
In November 1999 the Boston Globe published a 4-part series that documented how badly government has ravaged its own holdings.
Here is how David Armstrong, the Globe reporter, summarized the situation:
The United States government, which acts as steward and protector of the nation's environment, is itself the worst polluter in the land.
Federal agencies have contaminated more than 60,000 sites across the country and the cost of cleaning up the worst sites is officially expected to approach $300 billion, nearly five times the price of similar destruction caused by private companies. . . .
Nearly every military base and nuclear arms facility in the country is contaminated. The pollution extends from the US Mint, which released hazardous chemicals into the air when producing commemorative coins, to the national parks, where leaky oil tanks and raw sewage are polluting pristine rivers.
Even the Environmental Protection Agency [EPA], charged with enforcing the country's environmental laws, has been fined for violating toxic waste laws at its laboratories. At the EPA's lab in Lexington, for example, mercury was discovered leaching into the ground water three years ago. ["The Nation's Dirty Big Secret," The Boston Globe, November 14, 1999]
From raw sewage flowing into the lakes and streams of Yellowstone National Park to U.S. Navy oil spills in Washington's Puget Sound to PCBs making fish inedible in the Shenandoah River, the administrators of government facilities have paid no attention to the devastation they've caused. And why should they? Unlike private companies, government agencies are exempt from almost all the strict, expensive laws the politicians pass to demonstrate their concern for the environment.
The EPA has estimated that it will cost about $57 billion to clean up all the privately owned SuperFund sites in America. If that price tag seems large, consider that the EPA estimates the cost of cleaning up all the sites polluted directly by the federal government to be at least $280 billion.
This isn't an accident. It isn't a case of hiring the wrong people to manage government property or to run government agencies. It is the direct result of giving control of property to people who have no personal interest in its future value.
The solution to America's pollution problems is to get as much property as possible out of the hands of government. Private owners will always take better care of land and other resources, because they worry about the future resale value of these resources. Government administrators have no reason to care about the future value of anything under their care. >>
When will you realize?
How about this?
<< To say that government must force manufacturers to provide clean cars is to ignore history -- and to ignore the fact that companies have a strong motivation to provide what people want. Having politicians determine what's good for people is a recipe for exploiting people on behalf of those with the most political influence.
And fifth, when decisions are made politically, they are almost always made without regard to all the potential consequences. The EPA has forced car-makers to build smaller cars. The rationale is to produce more fuel-efficient cars that will reduce the demand for gasoline and that will save lives by reducing the air pollution that fuel produces.
Both reasons ignore more important considerations. The desire for fuel efficiency was born in the 1970s when price controls on oil and natural gas in the U.S. discouraged the development of new petroleum sources to compete with the OPEC oil cartel. Since the price controls were removed in 1981, oil production has boomed, oil prices have plummeted, and there has been no need to conserve oil. But the perception that fuel efficiency is somehow virtuous remains with us to this day.
And meanwhile lives are being lost because smaller cars are more dangerous than larger cars. In fact, more traffic deaths are caused by reducing the size of cars than have been saved by reducing air pollution. The Competitive Enterprise Institute estimates that between 2,600 and 4,500 of 1998's 21,000 car deaths were attributable to the smaller cars that were produced to conform to the EPA's fuel economy standards. And a 1989 study by Harvard University and the Brookings Institute estimates that fuel-economy mandates cause a 14-27% increase in yearly traffic deaths. >>