Bush speech on energy policy today 4247

Not necessarily. A bad catalytic converter, for instance, won't stop a car from being "functional" necessarily. And we are often talking about drivers who are so lazy they won't bother to fix it, or just too poor, or both.

Lots of these cars do exist; you see them all the time, especially if, like me, you live in a state with no smog inspections. We aren't talking about "vintage" cars that the owner waxes and babies and only takes out on sundays; we are talking about nasty, dirty, ill-mantained cars that are, for all purposes, "shot", held together by oh so many quarts of "stop leak" and "smoke-B-gone".

Read "The rest of Environmentalism". Environmentalism has basicly "won" all the goals it set in the 70's (the air and water in the US is essential "clean" and safe for nearly the whole population), and now they are basicly lacking direction or focus. Some of the issues may be too big for a single-interest style lobby-oriented group to fix, requiring a broader social movement not narrowly focused on "pollution" and narrow regulations. Some of their "goals" may now be in contradiction with each other. For instance, introduction of fuel injection in the 70's lead to cleaner running cars that were also more efficient- which is two things environmentalists wanted. But now, to get a more efficient car that is still relatively safe to drive and acceptable to consumers (ie, not an extremely underpowered slug), you have to make trade offs between how clean the car is, and how efficient it is- at least with currently used technology (which is why a Ford Focus gets about 26 miles per gallon and an EPA score of "6" for pollution, but a Toyota Corolla has a EPA score of only "2" (lower is worse), but gets more like 34 miles per gallon- a diesel VW would get an EPA score of "1" or "0" depending on the model year. Some trucks actually get "low emissions vehicle" ratings with California but pretty much are "gas guzzlers" in every respect).