News Release

March 12, 2002

CAFE Defeat Saved Lives, Scholar Says

WASHINGTON--Sens. Tom Daschle, D-SD, and John Kerry, D-MA, conceded today that they lacked the votes in the Senate to pass a major increase in the corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards. Jerry Taylor, director of natural resources studies at the Cato Institute, called it "a tremendous victory for human health and the economy." He had the following comments:

"Environmentalists who supported an expansion of CAFE standards for cars and light trucks are allowing their hostility to energy use to override their common sense. For instance, the National Academy of Sciences reported last year that the current standards are directly responsible for the deaths of 1,300 - 2,600 motorists a year. That's because automakers find that the cheapest way of increasing fuel efficiency is to reduce the size and weight of the cars they sell, making them more dangerous to motorists in a crash. Dramatically expanding CAFE standards would accelerate this trend and would directly result in the deaths of hundreds, if not thousands of Americans.

"While the costs of expanding CAFE standards is steep, the benefits are ephemeral. Expanded standards certainly wouldn't reduce foreign oil imports. For instance, since the CAFE standards were first introduced, the average fuel economy more than doubled for new cars and grew by more than 50 percent for new light trucks, but imported oil has increased from 35 to 52 percent of U.S. consumption. Reducing oil demand would remove the most expensive oil sources from the market first, and foreign oil is the cheapest oil supply source in the world. Domestic producers, not foreign oil producers, would be hit hardest if gasoline demand were to decline.

"Nor would an expanded CAFE standard do much about global warming. Gasoline consumption in the United States is only responsible for 1.5 percent of all human-related greenhouse gas emissions. The EPA reports that expanded CAFE standards won't appreciably change that figure.

"If people want to drive fuel efficient cars, that's their right. But forcing people in cars they don't otherwise wish to drive -- or indirectly taxing them through the regulatory standards for not choosing to drive cars that environmentalists like -- is not only wrong, it's dangerous."