If cars were smaller in general, then I wouldn’t get as injured when Joe Blow’s SUV crashes into my Honda Civic. And he would get better gas mileage.

Even though I completely reject the argument that “fuel efficiency kills,” I must say that I’m not a huge fan of CAFE standards. If we assume that the goal is to reduce overall energy usage and pollution, mandatory vehicle fuel economy standards are an attack on the wrong side of the problem.

One thing the Competitive Enterprise Institute actually has right is that it makes more sense to drive fuel economy from the consumer side than from the producer side. If you make fuel more expensive, and if you tie things like vehicle fees and taxes to fuel economy (as is done in Germany), then consumers will demand higher-mileage vehicles without having to place any additional government restrictions on auto producers.

If you allow the price of fuel, taxes, and fees to remain very low by international standards (as is the case in the USA), then forcing an increase in vehicle fuel economy simply enables people to drive more. The increase in vehicle miles traveled can wind up erasing the gains from the increased fuel economy of the vehicles themselves.

That’s what lead the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office to conclude that a gasoline tax would be far more effective than tougher CAFE standards at reducing energy consumption and emissions:

The gasoline tax would outperform the CAFE standards because, while both policies would improve the fuel economy of new vehicles, the tax would produce greater immediate gasoline savings by inducing owners of both new and existing vehicles to drive less. In contrast, by making new vehicles cheaper to operate, higher CAFE standards would encourage owners of new vehicles to drive more (and would not affect the driving incentives of existing-vehicle owners at all).

I know that gasoline taxes are a political third rail, but if we’re serious about doing something about climate change, they have to be on the table. Just fretting about things like Styrofoam cups and leaf blowers is not going to cut it. Sorry, folks, there’s not going to be a technological silver bullet or other easy answer to save us. Some tough choices have to be made, and it’s going to involve adjustments in our behavior, not the behavior of unspecified “others.”

By the way, when I say “adjustments in our behavior,” I do not necessarily mean “reductions in our quality of life.” I firmly believe that we can become a nation in which people consume far less energy and natural resources than they do today, yet still lead happy, fulfilling lives. A big part of that is changing development and transportation spending patterns to allow more people to make more trips on foot or by bicycle, bus, or rail. When these options are truly viable, then living a lower-impact lifestyle becomes a pleasure rather than a painful sacrifice.

All of this is not just some environmentalist fantasy; for example, most other industrialized nations already emit 50% or less carbon per capita than we do here in the USA, yet the citizens of those nations still enjoy a high quality of life. It can be done; it’s primarily a matter of finding the political will!