Can’t Get Enough of that Regulation
Reports about fuel efficiency standards focus on environmentalists’ complaints and encourage more government meddling in business.

By Ken Shepherd
Business & Media Institute
March 30, 2006

     When environmentalists want regulation, it’s never enough. And the media are often willing to give them the spotlight.

     New fuel efficiency regulations have the media going straight to environmental groups for frowns – all the while assuming that more costly regulation of the auto industry is a good thing.

     “His plan is so weak, it’s like asking a three-pack-a-day smoker to cut back one cigarette,” said the Sierra Club’s Daniel Becker in Tom Costello’s story on the March 30 “Today.”

     March 30 articles for The Washington Post and The New York Times jumped immediately into complaints by “environmental groups.” The Post left out any response from opponents of the regulation, while the Times buried the response of the SUV Owners of America (SUVOA).

     The Times’s Matthew Wald dismissed SUVOA as “a group run by industry lobbyists,” allowing them one quote at the end of his article. “In an era when we’re at $2.50 a gallon plus, the real question is why you need a rule like this,” argued SUVOA spokesman Ron DeFore.

     NBC’s Costello also included DeFore in his “Today” story but put greater weight on complaints about the regulation by the Sierra Club.

     Costello added that “environmental groups” like Becker’s want 40-mile-per-gallon requirements for all passenger vehicles in the United States, regardless of size, but he didn’t find an expert to address how feasible, or calculate how costly, it would be to make vans and trucks meet such a high standard.

     CNN’s Miles O’Brien agreed on the March 30 “American Morning,” saying, “I’d like an SUV that gets 50 miles to the gallon. Why can’t we do that? We sent a man to the moon.” Andy Serwer then encouraged him to “buy a hybrid.”

     Serwer said the standards, which would require a Ford Explorer SUV to increase its fuel efficiency from 17.7 mpg to 25.2 mpg by the year 2011, were a “modest” increase and added, “consumer advocates say that this is not enough and more should be done.” He didn’t identify these so-called “consumer advocates,” who supposedly would support higher car prices for auto buyers. The Post reported that the regulations will increase automakers’ costs by $6.7 billion.

     In the drive to reduce gasoline consumption, the media overlooked experts such as Mark P. Mills, a “physicist and energy expert” quoted by the Times on March 30. He explained what a real “consumer advocate” would understand, exposing a flaw in the regulatory agenda. As the Times reported, he “said that improvements in vehicle efficiency would not reduce consumption because without a significant rise in gasoline prices to encourage buyers to save fuel, most people would simply take advantage of the advances to demand bigger, faster vehicles.”