15 Jul 2001 Increasing Fuel Economy Standards Would Cost Lives Without Aiding the Environment

The “Campaign to Save Our Environment,” a coalition including the Natural Resources Defense Council and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group (PIRG), has begun running a television commercial so misleading it poses potentially serious harm to both the environment and the public interest.

The commercial, running in Las Vegas, Albuquerque, Washington, D.C. and Portland, Maine, uses graphics such as skull and crossbones over glasses of water to attack President George W. Bush for postponing the setting of standards for arsenic in drinking water. According to a copy of the commercial, supplied by PIRG,1 over the ominous graphics a woman’s voice says:

“Given the choice, would you want more arsenic in your water? Or less?”

“Doctors and scientists agree there should be less.”

“But President Bush says: That’s too expensive.”

“He is proposing to allow more arsenic in your drinking water — as much as twice the amount that doctors, scientists and health organizations say is safe.”

All very scary. Just not true.

These groups are exercised about President Bush’s decision to examine the regulation, issued in the closing days of the Clinton Administration, to reduce acceptable levels of arsenic in drinking water.

Under Clinton, this rule was scheduled take effect in 2006.

Under Bush, a rule to reduce arsenic levels is still scheduled for 2006.

So, contrary to the commercial, Bush is not proposing more arsenic for your drinking water. The opposite is true.

Bush is allowing the old arsenic standard to remain in place until 2006, exactly the same length of time it would have under the Clinton rule. The only difference between the Bush and Clinton policies is that Bush has directed the National Academy of Sciences to take nine months to determine precisely what the new arsenic standard should be.

The Clinton Administration said the standard should drop in 2006 from 50 parts per billion to 10 parts per billion. Bush wants to see if the National Academy of Sciences agrees with this standard, or if it would recommend a different one.

Bush’s reason is quite simple. Contrary to the commercial, there is substantial disagreement on the safe level of naturally-occurring arsenic in drinking water. NRDC, one of the ad’s sponsors, has said it should be lower than the 10 parts per billion set in the Clinton rule. Others say higher is satisfactory. The National Academy of Sciences hasn’t said at all. Now this most respected scientific body will have the opportunity to do so.

The claim that President Bush said lowering allowed arsenic levels is “too expensive” is also a distortion of fact. What he said was that additional lowering of arsenic levels is costly and would be even more so if the wrong standard were set.

The cost of meeting the new arsenic standard will significant for many communities, particularly small ones. The costs will be even higher if the standards are later found to be incorrect, and new standards are imposed, requiring even more modifications to municipal water systems.

Bush is aware of a key fact the commercial fails to acknowledge: There is a very real possibility that setting unnecessarily low standards will cause some small municipalities to simply go out of the water supply business. If this happens, homeowners will be forced to rely on individual, untreated private wells. This would expose these Americans to even higher levels of arsenic.

So Bush is not only toughening the arsenic standards, he is improving the Clinton regulation to protect Americans even more.

If Bush did not consult with the National Academy of Sciences, a perfect example of the law of unintended consequences could follow. This is a seeming “law of nature” in Washington, which leads a politically-motivated Congress to pass a law or a politically-motivated president to enact a rule which makes worse the problem it is alleged to solve. In this case, it could lead to more arsenic in the drinking water of some Americans, not less.

The groups sponsoring the anti-Bush arsenic commercial seem to have fallen prey to the law of unintended consequences.

In view of the commercial’s distortions, and the fact that these distortions may actually harm the people the sponsoring groups purport to protect, the responsible thing to do would be to pull the commercial from the air.

End the hysterical rhetoric. Let the National Academy of Sciences do its work.

by Tom Randall

A leaked draft of the upcoming National Academy of Sciences report on Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards re-ignites an old debate over the wisdom of having and raising federally-imposed fuel economy standards. Environmental groups, some media and many representatives support raising the CAFE standards, especially for SUVs and light trucks, which have increased in popularity in recent years.

The only significant way to meet raised CAFE standards is by reducing the weight of vehicles, which makes vehicles dramatically more dangerous for passengers. Studies have shown that federally-forced higher average fuel efficiency encourages more people to drive on their own, rather than use public transport or other alternatives, creating an overall increase, not decrease, in energy use.

Data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration shows that an estimated 302 additional people die in auto accidents for every 100 pounds cut from the average car weight (see https://nationalcenter.org/NPA256.html). The insurance industry estimates that, to meet some of the proposed CAFE standards hikes, SUVs alone would have to shed 2,000 pounds, with an estimated 90% increase in fatality risk in accidents.

A 1996 study funded by the Department of Transportation argues that raising the CAFE standards increases the tendency towards single occupancy driving because driving becomes less expensive. This increases overall gasoline usage, and increases the cost of public transportation as it attempts to offer more amenities to compete with private single occupancy vehicles (see http://www.heartland.org/pdf/23221p.pdf).

Finally, the supposed danger of CO2 emissions, which CAFE standards are designed to reduce, remains questionable. While cleaner fuels make for cleaner air, particularly in crowded cities, changing fuel consumption levels may have no influence on climate change.