I am about to read to you the first paragraph of an article that appeared recently in the British newspaper The Guardian: “French drivers who favor large, gas guzzling cars will have to pay up to four thousand dollars more for a new model from next January.”
Europeans -- the French & the British -- are getting fed up with large gas guzzling vehicles. As the article points out, “off road vehicles are among the most environmentally harmful vehicles…emitting up to four times as much CO2 as a normal car.” As Denis Baupin, a senior Green Councilor in Paris said: “They’re polluters, they’re space occupiers, they’re dangerous for pedestrians and other road users. They’re a caricature of a car.” And as he went on to say “Off road vehicles are just not suited to towns.”
We all know that Americans love large cars. Years ago I read that more than half of new cars sold were off road vehicles, large gas guzzling models -- and I know the oft-forwarded argument that people believe, that in an accident, they will be safer in a large vehicle. Yes, they will be safer, but their vehicle is a menace to everyone else -- and not only in car accidents. These large cars pollute more, consume more, endanger everyone else. We need to discourage people from buying such large cars -- and this scheme tries to do just that.
Not only does it slap a hefty “tax” on big cars, it takes that tax money and gives it directly to people who choose to buy a small car. Under this scheme, people who buy a small car will receive an immediate rebate of up to $1,000. The whole thing is on a sliding scale. Large cars are heavily taxed, small cars are eligible for a rebate, mid size cars are unaffected.
This scheme is not fool proof. Very rich people will continue to buy very big cars. You can’t stop people from buying what they want to buy, but you can try to discourage people. You can reward those who buy small cars that pollute less, consume far less of what are non-renewable resources. And you can penalize those who think of their own safety foremost & the safety & health of others almost not at all.
I am not so stupid as to believe that such a scheme will be implemented in the U.S. soon, but we should do something to discourage people from buying big, off road vehicles that, as the article says, “are not suited to towns.” Or, to put it more strongly & to perhaps antagonize some of you listeners, I will quote Ken Livingstone, the Mayor of London, who said 4x4 vehicles are “bad for London, completely unnecessary and their owners are complete idiots.”
Copyright © 2004 Henry Morgenstein