I believe this was in retaliation for the automakers suing the californian government over the low emmissions laws.

The problem I have with this is that the state of California, or the federal government could have aligned its emissions regulations with Europe and therefore opened the market to small diesels and more fuel efficient cars, instead choosing 'slightly' different standards and timetable, and causing massive incremental cost in the auto manufacturers. At the same time reducing competition, and reducing the incentive to the big auto manufacturers to change.

Van wrote: But compulsion never works, see the history of left-wing economics, so incentives are the key.

Seat belts, airbags, catalysts, and energy absorbing bumpers are all the result of compulsion. As far as Detroit is concerned, it appears that compulsion is the only thing that works.

kehughes wrote: The problem I have with this is that the state of California, or the federal government could have aligned its emissions regulations with Europe and therefore opened the market to small diesels and more fuel efficient cars, instead choosing 'slightly' different standards and timetable, and causing massive incremental cost in the auto manufacturers. At the same time reducing competition, and reducing the incentive to the big auto manufacturers to change.

Southern California's LA/San Gabriel/Pomona air basin is unlike anything in Europe that I'm aware of. I'd hesitate to try to outthink the CARB on this one.

Hi George, the CARB is yet another abject failure, with a 40 year history of mistaken regulation. When you burn fuel, the product goes into the air. This is why the air in the basin is so hard to breath, and everyone packs an inhaler.

We will clean up the air when we actually reduce the abmount of fuel being burned.

Regulation, controlled versus free enterprise if you will, does work, but when silly people take the enterprise out of the equation, they throw the baby out with the bath water.

We use price structure to conserve water. We use price structure to conserve electricity. Regulation driven, but the incentive approach, where we can make consumption decisions based on what we see as best for us individually.

George,

Firstly, I live in LA so understand the issues of the valleys. Second, thinking that air quality is not an issue in Athens or Rome, or it is somehow different, is exactly why we have multiple emissions regulations around the globe, which amazingly, all output into the same atmosphere. This is the problem with politicians, they think they are different and 'right thinking' instead of looking for common ground to solve real global problems. No wonder humans are screwing the planet!

Again its not the fault of the car makers that california was stupid enough to let soo many people live is a place where the air doesnt refesh for weeks at a time.

According to one poll, 45% of Canadians do not know the difference between smog-forming and GHG emissions (yet 85% of them allow themselves to have strong opinion on the subject). Looks like situation on this particular tread is no better.

Hi George, the CARB is yet another abject failure, with a 40 year history of mistaken regulation. When you burn fuel, the product goes into the air. This is why the air in the basin is so hard to breath, and everyone packs an inhaler.

This is simply not true. The only thing that we will definately reduce by reducing the amount of fuel burned is CO2. IC engines that are allowed to produce unlimited amounts of pollutants can be substantially more energy efficient than a clean engine.

Firstly, I live in LA so understand the issues of the valleys. Second, thinking that air quality is not an issue in Athens or Rome, or it is somehow different, is exactly why we have multiple emissions regulations around the globe, which amazingly, all output into the same atmosphere.

Air quality is important in all cities, but LA is unique in that the geography forms a basin, with thermal inversion layers clamping a lid on the chemical broth, with plentiful UV to cook it. I'm not aware of a place quite like that, with that density of vehicles, in Europe.

George wrote: "This is simply not true. The only thing that we will definately reduce by reducing the amount of fuel burned is CO2. IC engines that are allowed to produce unlimited amounts of pollutants can be substantially more energy efficient than a clean engine."

Lets leave it that given an engine efficiency, so much polution per gallon of gas, the only way to reduce the polution is to reduce the amount of fuel being burned. Hybrids allow engines to operate in their most efficent mode more of the time, so they reduce polution by reducing the amount of gas being burned and the amount of polution produced by the gas being burned.

Van, the efficiency of an IC engine is the amount of usable energy it extracts from a gallon of gas. I think that you are confusing the efficiency of an engine with its cleanliness. Generally speaking, cleaner engines, meaning engines that produce fewer pollutants, are less efficient than engines that are allowed to pollute more. For the purpose of this discussion, I am not considering CO2 to be a pollutant. I'm just talking about the things that create smog.

ONE way to reduce pollution is to use the engine less, as with a hybrid, which has the ancillary effect of using less gas, but that is not the ONLY way to reduce pollution. The OTHER way to reduce pollution is to make the engine cleaner, thus using MORE gas.

Hi George, I do not think efficiency is restricted to thermal efficiency. If you think there is a basis for saying cars with higher thermal efficency put out more polution, and therefore you have to trade thermal efficency to reduce polution efficency (amount of polutants per gallon burned), lets leave it that I think current thinking is we can have our cake and the iceing, with improved combustion patterns, common rail injection, electronically modulated valves and all the rest of the stuff regularly reported by Green Car Congress. The old thinking was provincial, take care of the local problem at the expense of a global one, and did not reflect sound engineering of the mandated solution. We need to burn less fuel, and we need to burn it in a way that reduces both the amount of fuel burned and the amount of polution produced.

Ok Van, that soounds reasonable.