So here's the deal. Phosphates really are a danger, creating runoff that kills fish and plants. And Spokane has a uniquely bad problem with phosphates. And apparently it's entirely possible to create phosphate-free detergents. The industry just didn't feel like doing it.
But now their hands are being forced. And guess what? It turns out they can do it after all. Imagine that.
Er, industry also knew how to make low-flow toilets, which is why every toilet in my recently renovated rental house clogs at least once a week. They knew how to make more energy efficient dryers, which is why even on high, I have to run every load through the dryer in said house twice. And they knew how to make inexpensive compact flourescent bulbs, which is why my head hurts from the glare emitting from my bedroom lamp. They also knew how to make asthma inhalers without CFCs, which is why I am hoarding old albuterol inhalers that, unlike the new ones, a) significantly improve my breathing and b) do not make me gag. Etc.
In fact, when I look back at almost every "environmentally friendly" alternative product I've seen being widely touted as a cost-free way to lower our footprint, held back only by the indecent vermin at "industry" who don't care about the environment, I notice a common theme: the replacement good has really really sucked compared to the old, inefficient version. In some cases, the problem could be overcome by buying a top-of-the-line model that costs, at the very least, several times what the basic models do. In other cases, as with my asthma inhalers, we were just stuck.
That is not necessarily an argument against the switch--if the costs are high enough (and maybe, in the case of phosphates, they are), then we should go ahead and use the more annoying product. But it's well to remember that there are tradeoffs--that indeed, "industry's" reluctance is probably because they are well aware of what those tradeoffs are.
It's hard to imagine people would be smuggling in detergent from neighboring states if the replacement stuff was just as good as the original.
The industry just didn't feel like doing it.
How many industries have "feelings"? As opposed to a desire not to piss off customers?
Absolutely true on all accounts, even the detergent bit. Phosphates in the detergent really do clean clothes better. Much better.
Of course maybe in the last couple years there has been some break through and their new chemical only causes cancer or eczema...
Please add the "water-efficient" clothes washers to the list, right next to the energy-efficient driers. Lack of water IS NOT compensated for by adding foreign smells (with the detergent or softener)... it was last tried by medieval nobility and didn't work then either.
Oh, and the old driers used to spit out the clothes looking like they've just been ironed. The new ones... let's just say the output looks like someone very fidgety sat on it for a while.
Coming from a not-so-proud owner of latest and greatest (and frigging EXPENSIVE!) Bosch products...
They knew how to make more energy efficient dryers, which is why even on high, I have to run every load through the dryer in said house twice.
Do you remember to clean the lint filter after every load. I don't know what you are doing what I have Bosch as well and they work great. No second time through with the dryer or anything. Me thinks somehow you are doing something wrong.
The miracle benefits of forcing technology are painfully illustrated in the evolution of CFLs. First, traditional lightbulbs were evil, so in the case of Europe and then Australia, the greener equivalent had to be forced by outlawing the older technology. So, now we have a lamp that, in total, is about twice as energy efficient for a given level of luminous output...with a non-trivial problem of spectral banding (especially in the lower-cost units that most closely substitute for a cheap incandescent), as well as the loss of passive heating that is sometimes an advantage in cooler climates.
Then, as CFLs increased in popularity, the Green Machine noticed that CFLs contain -- horrors! -- mercury. So they started imposing stringent mercury limits for a given lamp type, and lo and behold, suddenly the CFLs start acquiring precisely what many of the original ones were hated for, a warm-up time.
Presumably, the next step is to ban CFLs for containing evil environmental pollutants like mercury and phosphors, and force everyone to use white LED technology. After that, somone will notice that white LEDs still contain some amount of phosphors, and mandate darkness.
At that point, man will perhaps rediscover fire, followed by the incandescent light.
At that point, man will perhaps rediscover fire
Hot Damn! I knew those whale oil options where going to pay off!
Isn't this kind of missing the point? It's not important that we lower our footprint because life will stay exactly the same and everything will be exactly as great as before. It's important because our current lifestyle/consumption levels are unsustainable and will lead to an existential crisis for all of humanity. Hi-Flo toilets aren't causing that, but the aggregate of all the Hi-Flos and CFCs and SUVs and deregulated industry is causing that, and will continue to cause that, right up until we consume enough to permanently destroy the ecological balance of the world we have to live in. There's a good reason that Seven Hawking has said that the only long-term hope for humanity is to discover a new planet to live on.
If you're a doomsayer, yeah, I suppose that killing our useful, effective technology in favour of the wacky and ineffective to solve a hilariously narrow aspect of an all-consuming problem could be a good plan. Even then, though, I'd wager that most of the replacements are worse for the environment than the originals - they cost more because they use more resources, after all. Unless the original problem is an insufficiently internalized externality(which, to be fair, some of them genuinely are), the costlier ones will generally prove to be worse for the environment in the long run.
Personally, I think that the best way to help the environment is to advance our technology, find better ways of doing things(and I mean ways that are genuinely better, not ways that the government thinks are better), and to otherwise work for a better society instead of setting up roadblocks because we're too afraid of the unknown.
It's important because our current lifestyle/consumption levels are unsustainable and will lead to an existential crisis for all of humanity
Uh.... [choking down the laughter] right!
Look, actually Spokane is having a big problem with this. Green Detergents apparently work well (I use mine down here in Corvallis Oregon, no complaints) until you get to HARD WATER. And Spokane has a lot of that. So the detergent ban isn't working all that well. Now people drive to Idaho and buy at Costco. Although I understand that the parts of WA that don't have Hard water are doing well enough.
Our new drier dries clothes in about half the time of our old drier. The temperature of the exhaust is noticeably cooler. YMMV
The new driers dry clothes more quickly because the new washing machines spin the clothes dry at a much higher rpm. This gets more of the water out of the clothes than was the case with older washers. This allows the new driers to dry the clothes more quickly and at a lower temperature. Overall, this uses less energy than the older versions of washers and driers.
Unfortunately, spinning the clothes dry at a higher rpm has the tendency to severely wrinkle the clothes. More unfortunately, the lower drying temps do not get the wrinkles out of the clothes. Fortunately, our new washer allows us to set the spin rpm down to something closer to the speed of the old washer. With that setting, it takes about twice as long for the new drier to get the clothes dry -- a little longer than the old drier used to take. Or, we can use the new drier's steam function to try and steam out the wrinkles. Either approach reduces the energy savings somewhat.
My wife swears neither approach works all that well, so she irons more of her clothes than she used to. Me? I'm a guy and I think the clothes come out of the dryer just fine, so I wear them that way if given the option. My wife doesn't think my clothes look just fine as they come out of the drier, so she ends up ironing more of my clothes, too. She just loves our new washer and drier! Me? I'm really glad to have spent about $2k on a new washer and drier that she hates.
Knowing that we helped save the planet, priceless...
There's a reason we don't have more green products, and you're spot-on: it's largely because the green products are inferior and more expensive in dollar terms to those buying them. That said, the green products are typically superior in some ways: at least some of their negative externalities and cost-to-own are significantly less, and that's worth something, too.
It's the externalities that concern me in particular- is it worth slightly-shinier dishes or laundry at slightly-lower cost to me if the trade-off results in fish-kill (which would fall as an expense upon someone else) downstream? To what extent does the externality render the product cheap and dominant in the market?
Externalities are of course a fact of life, but they're at least as arbitrary as the sort of regulation we're seeing here. More than one reasonable argument has been advanced in favor of correcting such externalities- wouldn't pigou apply here?
The clothes part is not relevant. There is no phosphate in laundry detergent and there hasn't been for many, many years.
The dish problem comes out because phosphates are good grease cutters, as is really hot water. Unfortunately, many of the present "energy star" appliances, like dish washers and washing machines, work at cooler water temps. So the combination of no phosphate and cooler temps makes it harder to clean the dishes.
If you want to see the effect of hot water on grease, just take a dish that was used to hold butter and hold it under the kitchen faucet with the water as hot as possible. The grease will run right off.
In many locales there is actually a MINIMUM temp set for water temp in commercial kitchens for washing dishes. It's pretty darn hot. That is for sanitary reasons.
I'm not one to suggest that anybody tolerate dirty dishes to save the planet or anything. I certainly don't- my energy-star rated dishwasher steam-cleans my dishes rather nicely, too.
It occurs to me that at least part of the reason we don't have more green products (the question Megan posed at the outset) is in part that "green" products solve problems that cost consumers nothing, and then ask consumers to pay for having solved the problem.
It costs a consumer nothing, less than nothing, to choose cheaper phosphate-based dish soap over the more enviromentally friendly kind. They don't bear (directly) the costs of downriver environmental damage, foregone fishery and all that- the consumer doesn't have any incentive to solve that problem, unless they independently value not polluting.
The value proposition, on net, of being rid of pollutants is almost certainly positive, but to the consumer, the opposite is true- why should they pay to solve a problem that costs them nothing today? This sort of negative externality signals a market failure, and I suspect that the failure of markets to price pollution in to 'dirty' alternatives is part of why we don't have that many green products: there's no market to solve a problem that doesn't cost buyers anything.
This reminds me of the polling where 90% of people answer yes to "Do you care about the environment?" and 90% answer no to "Would you give up $1 a day to help the environment?"
Also, at this point, our air and water are probably the cleanest and safest they've ever been (there was cholera & etc. before industrial times), so now to replace real problems we have this huge propganada-driven environmental crusade based on very weak evidence, mostly so people can feel like they're saving a polar bear from drowning.
And then there's the more urgent problem of, you know, safety. Apparently many green cleansers are simply diluted versions of existing chemicals, which is a problem if you a hospital.
OGW:
There's a good reason that Seven [sic] Hawking has said that the only long-term hope for humanity is to discover a new planet to live on.
Quite right - sort of. The reasons he cited were "asteroid collision or nuclear war," not phosphates in detergent.
An physicist who used to be a borg is going to be interested in space colonization no matter what the dangers to earth.
In college, my thermodynamics professor made a point about environmental rules that resonates with me a lot.
When teaching the refrigeration cycle and talking about refrigerants, he pointed out that the older CFC refrigerants, now banned, had a different compression cycle, which made them more efficient than the newer ones, and that the additional energy consumed by the less efficient refrigeration cycle more than outweighed any gain from eliminating CFC refrigerants, because refrigerant is not supposed to be released from a system in operation.
If dryers have to be run longer because they're not as hot, or people have to use more water and energy to wash dishes because the washer doesn't work as well, then that offsets other gains.
The problem with CFCs in general is that they were chemically mild, non-flammable, not particularly toxic to humans, and quickly evaporated. So they were used everywhere, far beyond just refrigeration systems. Straight refrigerant R11 (Freon) can be used out of the can as a fairly effective organic residue solvent that readily evaporates and leaves no residue of its own, so if it is left on the market for any reason, which it would have to be if it continued to be a ubiquitous refrigerant, it will quickly be appropriated for uses that release it into the environment.
Moreover, one of the two primary failure mechanism of a refrigeration system is refrigerant leakage (seals get old), and not all refrigeration techs are careful when they work, either. So refrigeration systems also release refrigerant into the environment one way or another, it's just a question of when.
A good example is the automobile industry. Emissions standards significantly reduce engine efficiency, and thus fuel efficiency. Can we have a 75mpg vehicle? Maybe. But it becomes exceedingly difficult when considering emissions requirements. And it likely carries significant cost, partially a burden to the consumer. But this is precisely why we require regulations to solve this problem. A producer cannot voluntarily hamstring itself by making an inferior and more costly product while the other market producers can make a superior and more cost effective product. The former would likely not even sell it's more "social friendly" product. What good is that?
But for Kevin not to acknowledge this simple distinction, but rather attribute it to some nefariousness on the part of producers, is stupid.
"But for Kevin not to acknowledge this simple distinction, but rather attribute it to some nefariousness on the part of producers, is stupid."
There is a certain class of 'policy wonk' liberal commentator who lacks even the slightest familiarity with the private sector, and thus finds it easy to casually impute malice to any decision made there.
Sure, but Kevin's usually more sophisticated than that; that post seemed more of a Yglesias/Ezra Klein sort of naivete.
There is a certain class of 'policy wonk' liberal commentator who lacks even the slightest familiarity with the private sector, and thus finds it easy to casually impute malice to any decision made there.
You mean like the banking sector? Most times, the companies do it to themselves. Did the car companies really think we'd have cheap oil forever(As just one example)?
There was a great story from the baby food industry: mommies would put a little bit on their wrists, and taste. Mommies liked salt, so all the baby food makers had to put in salt or lose business. Too much salt was bad for the babies' kidneys. Nobody could take it out by himself. FDA sat everybody down and told them if they didn't, there would be regulation. Everybody took it out, the mommies were happy, the babies were healthy. But you had to have somebody to make them all sit down.
Dubious. Mothers are keenly interested in the health of their children, so companies could gain a large advantage by eliminating salt while pointing out their competitors' products were less healthy as soon as this problem became known.
By the FDA's own account, that seems to be what happened:
Before 1970, baby foods in jars often contained added sodium in the form of salt and monosodium glutamate (MSG). Then the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Pediatrics pointed out that the amount of sodium in baby foods was often far in excess of body needs and that additives (other than vitamins and minerals) were not necessary to the proper nourishment of infants. In response to these points and to the growing concern that high sodium intake early in life might lead to high blood pressure later on, manufacturers of baby food began to limit the amount of added sodium. By 1978, they had entirely stopped adding MSG and salt to products meant for babies under 1 year.
I don't see that we are particularly in disagreement, as long as you read "In response to these points and to the growing concern that high sodium intake early in life might lead to high blood pressure later on, manufacturers of baby food began to limit the amount of added sodium" as "FDA sat everybody down".
I worked for FDA in the late 70s (not in the baby food area) and as I remember it that's how the medical concern got translated into changes in the formulations.
Megan, I'm wondering why you are so serially dissatisfied with greenish products, to the point of actual physical distress. I use all of those products, including the inhalers, and they all seem to work fine to me. Perhaps you're an outlier, akin to the people who are extremely sensitive to chemicals of all sorts; but even that wouldn't explain why your low-flow toilets all clog, while mine never do.
All four of the low-flush toilets for which I am responsible to de-clog when necessary need to be de-clogged once every 2-3 months. AFAIC I'm with Megan on this one.
Many low-flow latrines are evil, although frequency of altercation does somewhat depend on what TP you use. Silk dishcloths like Charmin' are bad, manly woodsman paper like ScotTissue tends to be less problematic unless you really go wild with it.
When low-flow was mandated, many manufacturers tried to adapt their existing designs to use less water. Change the tank, keep the bowl. Doesn't work. A good low-flow unit needs to somehow set up a strong whirlpool for several seconds before attempting to drain, as this twists the waste and paper into a rope that will follow the plumbing instead of compressing it into a soggy plug. It's also more expensive to design a latrine that way, and the cheap ones often just use the traditional approach and hope for the best.
Residential use of urinals would save far more water than any amount of low-flow toilet chicanery.
I absolutely loathe the shitty light thrown off by the compact fluorescents. That and the absurd instructions about what needs to be done to dispose of them and the fact that they will be mandated in the next couple years go a very long way to destroying my willingness to support other green measures.
And I'm planning on stocking piling incandescent bulbs.
Kevin, like a lot of good liberals, fails on a regular basis to realize that businesses give consumers what consumers demand. You see the exact same principle at work in that evil product that auto companies have been foisting on the hapless public for the last 20 years- the SUV.
Hrm. Let's see what we can do to make this sensible.
There, fixed.
The modern SUV was created out of nothing but marketing (the mass market for them, anyways) in an effort by Detroit to get around fuel efficiency and emissions regulations that were making it harder to sell big cars like station wagons.
Consumers didn't need or want them until they were told they needed and wanted them (and the tax/regulatory subsidies helped as well, of course).
Yeah, none of the Boy Scout parents I knew actually wanted a vehicle that could carry four scouts with kit.
Seriously though, I think you're underestimating the number of people that wanted Sport Utility Vehicles for sport and utility, or at least the extent to which they valued them for that reason. Sure, they became a symbol of exurban affluence, and that may have even made up the majority or the motivation for a lot of purchases, but that was never the only reason for everyone.
That's why I said "mass market for them".
People used to need station wagons. Relatively few people needed SUVs. All of the sudden, though, everybody with a big family or cargo needed SUVs. Why was that?
Consumers didn't need SUVs until government policies made it significantly more profitable for the car companies to make them instead of station wagons with the same passenger space. Seat belt rules may have had something to do with this, too.
The Chevy Suburban has been around in something like its current size and shape since at least the 1950s, but it wasn't until CAFE rules made a distinction between cars/station wagons and "light trucks" that the SUV took off.
The rules that made SUVs different than station wagons weren't the idea of the government; they were pushed by carmakers seeking a market that the Japanese weren't in yet.
Meth is also a very effective way to lose weight. Its MUCH better than any diet pill on the market.
The main difference with that is that the user also gets the negative effects. When instead those negative effects are flushed down the sewer and they harm "public" goods like fish, wildlife, etc.
Whether you think of it as a tragedy of the commons, or your run of the mill externality, even the most ardent of libertarians should realize that those wonderful efficient free market outcomes only work with the oft-violated assumption of no externalities, and that is why "internalizing" the externality is such a basic element of market economics. Whether or not its been properly internalized is up to debate.
I will grant you that there is quite a bit of truth that the lack of such products was not due to some evil industry that did not offer them purely out of spite.
But, as your blog is titled, "ASYMMETRIC INFORMATION" you should be well aware that consumers might not KNOW about the negative externalities their actions cause, much less have even an inkling that there are potential (even if inferior) products out there that lessen those negative externalities.
Its not surprising that the industry has little incentive to educate the public, then research and develop an alternative in order to fix this. That would be a costly solution to a problem their consumer's might not even know about.
For all we know cell phones are certain to cause brain tumors after 20 years of use, but none of us demand an alternative because we are lacking that information.
There are many interesting things to discuss about this sort of problems, but I fear your post will do little more than spawn its fair share of, "stupid liberals and their stupid green products that don't work" type comments.
Yes, many actions impose externalities. Therefore those actions should be taxed at a rate that reflects the externalities that are imposed. It's a far more elegant solution than simply banning various substances or relying on education. People respond to prices.
But only librul commie syms want to raise taxes for any reason. True American Conservatives believe that taxes should be reduced to 0%. So proposing that some mythical "externalities" should be offset through higher taxes just demonstrates that you are a tax and spend librul who can't be taken seriously.
Are you being serious or just sarcastic?
Thank you, Colin. I was grinding my molars after much talk of externalities without any discussion of, um, @#$%^#$ PRICE, and how using that to modify behavior can be more beneficial than command regulations.
"...even the most ardent of libertarians should realize that those wonderful efficient free market outcomes only work with the oft-violated assumption of no externalities, and that is why "internalizing" the externality is such a basic element of market economics."
The first thing that pops into the heads of most libertarians is the issue of internalizing price, not simply regulation. *You* should realize *that* and address it..
Your head hurts from the CFL's...not from staring into a glaring computer screen all day?
I'm fine with all of this except for the CFL thing. Really, I buy reasonably priced Sylvania CFL bulbs of various brightnesses at Lowes and the light they emit is very nice. Sure....you buy a cheap "daylight" blub from the dollar store and you're going to end up with green skin and a migrane, but modern CFLs are just fine.
I like the new CFLs and I'm glad that they are around. What I don't like is the fact government is trying to force me to buy CFLs instead of traditional light bulbs for use in those locations where I refer using an incandescent. Several of our home's light fixtures will need to be replaced once incandescent bulbs are no longer available. (They are incompatible because the fixtures have exposed bulbs. My wife will not tolerate the look of a CFL corkscrew sticking out from her stainedglass lampshade. Nor will she put on her makeup underneath a light bar lit with bare CFLs.) How energy/resource efficient is it to use CFLs if it requires replacing light fixtures? Yes, the CFLs use less energy, but it takes a lot of energy to manufacture and transport the new fixtures. The payback may be measured in decades.
In other locations, we may need to supplement the existing light fixture with one or more additional fixtures. For example, our bedside lamp has a three-way bulb in it. This allows the lamp to provide soft, low, "mood" lighting and to be a good reading lamp. CFLs don't come in three-way versions. (At least, I've never seen them.) We would need three lamps with CSLs to replace the functionality of one lamp with a three-way incandescent bulb. Or, our family room has dimmer switches to allow us to dim the lights when watching a movie or have the lights up while playing board games. CFLs are not compatible with dimmer switches. We'll either need to replace the dimmers and/or add additional light fixtures to give us the same capability as our existing lighting. Finally, a few years ago, we remodeled our kitchen and installed recessed can lights. The kitchen lights are constantly being turned on an off. It's the busiest room of the house, so this is to be expected. The problem? The CFLs that fit in the cans do not last nearly as long as the incandescent versions of the same bulb. Why? CFLs last a long time -- unless you turn them on an off a lot. So, we're to leave the lights on in the kitchen?
3 way CFL at Wal-Mart.
http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=5684722
Heck, just google "three way CFL and get " Results 1 - 10 of about 331,000"
They're not that hard to find.
OK, I know Wal-Mart is a bit low class for most readers of this blog. But it really has some good products at good prices.
I have a couple of 3-way CFLs. They don't fit in the three-way fixture I want to put them in.
The one at WalMart is out of stock.
Like Dave, I've got a number of lamps and fixtures with dimmers. Yes, they do make bulbs that are dimmable. When I google that, the first link that comes up has them... for $12 a bulb.
http://www.e3living.com/catalog/121?gclid=CL2a8aeY35kCFeZL5QodQnpmWA
Yes, I know CFL's are cheaper, but I regularly find incandescent bulbs on sale for 50 cents a piece. Will these bulbs really last 24x as long as an incandescent? And if they do, will I still be alive by then to care?
I've tried a wide variety of CFLs and I hate them all. They just don't give off a decent spectrum of light.
You really need to start shopping smarter. Do some comparison shopping. Maybe even some research as to what products work best.
I've been using compact fluorescent bulbs for years - they work just fine. Try other brands to see if they avoid the slow startup times that some have, and to see which ones give off the right light for you. Over the years you've already done this with incandescent bulbs - you have to do the same for the CFBs. (I expect to go through the same process when LED bulbs for standard light sockets become cost effective.)
My energy efficient dryer works perfectly fine - and it is paired with a 13 year old slow spinning washer. Again - do some research to find the best products. Consumer Reports is your friend. My energy efficient dishwasher, which is run once every week or two, manages to clean the dishes well.
I have not bought any of these things for "green" reasons. I'm cheap, and less energy means less cost. So the "green-ness" of the products were definite selling points.
I'm not going to experiment with finding just the right CFL when they're $10 a pop. And if I do, I'm just going to throw the bad ones into the trash, mercury and all.
Pretty much all incandescent bulbs work in a way that I can predict by looking at the frosting (or lack thereof) and the watt rating. Brand names have almost nothing to do with it. CFLs aren't that predictable, and experimenting is more expensive, and more harmful to the environment.
I agree with the sentiment in general, but there are exceptions.
Electronic fuel injection in cars. There were a couple of limited fuel injected high performance vehicles, but nobody got serious until emissions made it necessary. These days everyone agrees it is better in almost every way, and cheaper.
No, no got serious about EFI until the integrated circuit market produced chips of sufficient power at acceptable cost that allowed for sophisticated and reliable EFI schemes when combined with the development of sensor technology. Those "limited" fuel injected high performance vehicles were either run by mechanical injection or extremely limited non-integrated/analog circuitry.
Prior to the mid-80s the technology simply wasn't there at acceptable cost. It's not just about emissions. While EFI schemes are always tuned by OEMs to control emissions as much as possible, they don't have to be. You can just as easily use them to optimize engine efficiency, power, or fuel usage. That's why there is a whole slew of after-market chips with different profiles. EFI is simply a superior technology that would have displaced carburetors anyway. It was just a matter of technology and cost.
The EFI didn't really work until you could get feedback into the system, which required oxygen sensors, which wouldn't work until leaded petrol was outlawed for environmental reasons.
This may not be clear from a US perspective, where the lead was phased out years before the electronics became possible, but in many parts of the world, the EFI was waiting in the wings, but couldn't really take hold until lead went out.
While I don't agree with Kevin Drum, I have used some of the green products you've mentioned and they work fine. I've been using laundry detergent w/o phosphates for a while and it works fine, I've used compact flourescents and they don't hurt my eyes and I used a washer and dryer that are effecient and clean AND dry my clothes in one cycle.
I think it can be said, that early on a lot of green products did suck, but the longer they were on the market, the better that they improved. If someone that makes a green product wants to survive, then they have to make a good product.
Not all green products "suck" and maybe you should try them again and see if they have improved- if you think the environment is important to you.
Aren't they all just cutting and pasting from the same hymnal anyway?
You should add the Teleprompter in Chief to the non-market-experience-whatsoever list.
Given that I rent my house, "shopping smarter" wouldn't do me any good on most of these things. Landlords install the cheapest washer because its performance isn't observable to the prospective renter. So my clothes don't dry, as they didn't in my last rental flat.
As for CFLs, reaction to them varies widely, and some are more sensitive than others. The fact that it works for you is no more useful than telling my friend with celiac disease that *I* can eat wheat bread just fine.
So, your point is, "Landlords never installed crappy appliances before environmentalism reared its ugly head?"
Landlords install the cheapest washer because its performance isn't observable to the prospective renter. So my clothes don't dry, as they didn't in my last rental flat.
Landlords install the crappiest product and they don't work. That means that green products don't work. It's possible that you need such harsh detergent, because your landlord has installed a crappy dishwasher as well. I love the logic. It's possible that the landlord doesn't care at all if your toilet clogs, so he buys the cheapest model because in the end he pays for less water. Since you pay for electricity, he doesn't really care if you run the dryer twenty times. That dryer was probably the cheapest on the market. If you have to put coins in to do laundry, then this is a feature and not a bug.
I almost, almost went out to get incandescent to temporarily change out the CFLs in my hotel room.
Another news at 11 item, hotel installs crappiest product available. This means that all CFL's are just as crappy as the hotel's. Secondly, the hotel doesn't need government regulation to do this they likely do it for the cost savings of lighting hundreds of room. It's the same reason why companies use florescent lighting.
You are so right. I use CFLs as porchlights and incandescents inside the house, but I'm in a northern climate. This makes sense because the "wasted energy" from the incandescents is radiated as heat, and I need heat in the house most of the time that I need lights on, when it is cold outside and the furnace is on. The heat is radiated evenly to all parts of the room I'm in, and considering that the price advantage of natural gas over electricity in my area for home heating is much less than it used to be, the incandescent bulbs are both more efficient and more efficacious as a heat source. Further, in my experience with CFLs, they have needed to be replaced more often than promised by the estimated life of the bulbs, making them relatively very expensive.
So my clothes don't dry, as they didn't in my last rental flat.
This isn't the U.K.
Well, now, if the problem is that the landlord installs the cheapest stuff, it seems wrong to put all the blame on the green product. I've had non-green washers that did a lousy job.
Part of the problem here may be a definition thing. Perhaps more environmentally sound products that are highly successful don't get labeled green.
Better gasoline and diesel engines are an example, as discussed above. CFLs in commercial can light installations are another, where incandescents' shorter life and higher heat output (NOT a benefit, contra aMouseforallSeasons, since commercial buildings must generally use AC and have much more economical heat sources than electric resistive) have significant costs.
Increasing energy- and resource-efficiency is a simple fact of life in commercial and industrial settings. This suggests that the argument above that the problem is poorly informed consumers is one that may have merit.
To Charles Lin, I don't understand how your professor could have pointed out that "the additional energy consumed by the less efficient refrigeration cycle more than outweighed any gain from eliminating CFC refrigerants," since the benefit of eliminating CFCs is reduced ozone depletion, not energy savings. Apples and oranges.
I almost, almost went out to get incandescent to temporarily change out the CFLs in my hotel room. I decided to tough it out, but my stay has been extended and I might do it. The light doesn't bother me much, but I don't like that they're dim and they're bad for reading. Mostly I hate the sound they make. I think they're OK for public places where they're always on and you don't have to wait for them to warm up and the noise is drown out.
The drop in our electric bill was noticeable when we switched from our old top loading washer to our front loader (LG). It spins the living daylights out of the clothes and they are almost dry before they hit the dryer. Interesting to me how the answer is not some special 'green' dryer, but a better washer.
Yes, low-flow toilets did have a real problem for quite a while. But they don't necessarily now. We renovated our bathrooms several years ago with Toto toilets, after researching on-line what worked. Four toilets, and never a clog to date. Your solution, if you can manage it, might be to get the permission of your landlord to renovate one more time, then invest in Totos (the flanged type, for a better seal with the floor). In this case, it really won't be money down the drain.
Megan,
Look into some nice full-spectrum fluorescent bulbs --- they might be more expensive initially but you won't have to replace them for five years.
And there are good "greener" appliances out there. But in the meantime, buy a nice iron and a trusty plunger and stop whining. God knows we've all had to deal with cheap landlords; all the industrial innovation in the world won't solve that problem.
And I do have faith that with consumer demand and prodding from local and federal government we will soon see great improvements in green technology.
Paul,
"And I do have faith that with consumer demand and prodding from local and federal government "
Fascinating... So if I state that I have faith that if we require prayer in school for everyone, with some prodding from the local government, we'll solve a large variety of social ills? (not that I would like this policy by any means, I would be against it)
It's nice to see what it all boils down to. I had this same conversation with a strict environmentalist who insisted he buy a propane powered car, and tries lives his life as emission free as possible. I suppose he was feeling very superior or at least proud of himself as he proclaimed it was a "moral and ethical issue" for him. We have to put the environment first, "for future generations and the right thing to do".
I actually agree that we should take care of the environment and that it is a moral issue.
But what's interesting is how he had absolutely no response when I told him the same line people on his political side of the aisle have advocated for years -- that he should not enforce his morals on to other people with the power of the state.
Ultimately most laws derive some foundation from moral issues. So I fundamentally disagree with the whole "morals can't be legislated" nonsense.
But I wonder when or if our fundie environmentalists will discover their crusade in the name of saving the planet is not all that different than the "religionists" crusade in the name of saving souls...
Our old washing machine drew its hot water from our household supply, efficiently heated with natural gas. Thanks to Euro rules, our new one heats its own water, inefficiently with electricity. Same for the dishwasher. It's easier to understand Greens if you just assume that they are stupid and ignorant. And sometimes corrupt.
Maybe successful green products aren't marketed as green, because consumers have learned from experience that green = more expensive and less effective.
Energy savings is saving the environment, duh. It's not fairies and elves behind the wall that make the magic happen when you flip on the light switch. Energy generation impacts the environment. So CFC free refrigerants can be as damaging to the environment as CFCs.
I switched most of our bulbs to CFCs many years ago -- partly for the energy savings, but even more because nobody but me will ever change a light bulb around here, and I got sick of doing it. CFCs don't always last as long as advertised, but they last way longer than conventional bulbs. But we have fixtures where there are no good non-incandescent replacements, and I will be greatly annoyed with any nannyish law to ban incandescents.
And as others have noted, up here in the north, we use the most lighting during the cold months when the extra energy used by incandescents is NOT wasted, but helps heat the house, so the energy savings of CFCs are overestimated. This same issue, BTW, applies to other appliances. During the months when it is cold and dark after dinner, we are much more likely to turn on the TV than in the summer months when we can be outside. When it's cold, the waste heat is not wasted at all--an important fact that those wring their hands over the energy consumption of flat screen TVs, for example, never seem to acknowledge.
Many years ago, I interviewed for a job with a major soap/detergent manufacturer. In the course of the plant tour, I learned that all their soap was made in vats on the top floor, then flowed to different manufacturing lines. One line added green color and wrapped the soap in green packaging, another added pink color and pink packaging, another ...
The VP who was guiding me told me that everyone makes soap the same way and, in fact, it's the same way the cave men made soap.
Then, he told me about detergents. He said they are all the same, too. His story was that the principal agents that affect the wash are the chemical content of the water and its temperature. The purpose of their millions of dollars in advertising is so that, one day when those factors are off a little, and the wash doesn't seem to be as clean, and the user decides to try another detergent, he or she will try the one whose ad they liked.
As a result, we buy cheap, store-label brands and are very happy.
Low-flush donickers would be less of a problem if America were a civilized country and had bidets as standard bathroom equipment. You'd use less t.p. and would have fewer clogs.
I switched most of our bulbs to CFCs many years ago -- partly for the energy savings, but even more because nobody but me will ever change a light bulb around here, and I got sick of doing it.
Think of the consequences: more CFC's will make obsolete the "How many _____ does it take to change a light bulb?" jokes.
Problems with a clothes dryer are most likely caused by a lint buildup in the dryer vent/duct. If you don't remember the last time you had it cleaned out, you should either do it yourself or hire someone to do it. Long drying times are almost always caused by this.
It's a fire hazard in any case, so be sure to do it!
And you know that technical expertise on a given subject is going to get better, on and on, world without end, Amen? This hasn't tended to be the historical case.
This doesn't make much sense as stated. You need to be more careful defining a metric, and who uses it.
Actually, we already know how to do this.
Need I make any comment?
Right. Because polluting other people's air is a moral issue just like prayer in school.
Right. Coke vs. Pepsi, brand differentiation and all that. As usual, Consumer Reports and suchlike is your friend. I recall many years ago when my mother, using that advanced green technology drying device the clothes line, would gossip over the fence about things like this. Also coupons, S&H Green Stamps, etc. This doesn't seem to be happening nearly so much in our so-called information age.
Better try that calculation again, Pablo.
One therm is equal to about 30 kWh. Even assuming a very old furnace (70% efficiency) one therm is equal to 20 kWh in heating value.
Thus, if you are paying $0.05/kWh for electricity (pretty cheap for residential, and likely less than the actual marginal cost of generation when you are using lights), your gas would have to be $1/therm for electricity to be more efficient. Gas should be about half that now.
A modern direct-vent furnace or boiler (another 'green' product that has become mainstream because it is just better) should have >90% effiicency.
"Should" is the key word. In practice it is often not so. For example, ordinarily the furnace heats the whole house because it is too much trouble to open and shut the registers as you move from room to room. The simple, elegant Edison bulb provides both light and supplemental heat where you are, is blessedly silent, can be replaced for pennies, and is esthetically pleasing. Thank you, because you bring up a different issue that is very valuable: as a policy goal, energy in its different forms should be conserved for those uses for which each form is best suited. For example, natural gas probably should not be used to generate electricity, because it is most advantageous when used directly for home heating and cooking relative to other forms of energy. Utilities can devise other strategies for meeting peak demand needs for electricity generation. Petroleum should probably be conserved for use as motor fuel and lubricants and not encouraged for the use of heating homes, given that there are more suitable alternatives such as natural gas, etc.
Energy saving or emission reducing works if you control the process from top to bottom. Two examples come to mind. Water based automotive paints, and lead free/water soluble flux circuit board soldering. Processes where everything is replaced to work with the new process.
In the situations described, real world intrudes. Hard water, marginal plumbing, landlords, clothes that wrinkle.
The idealist would blame hard water, landlords and clothes that wrinkle.
A realist would work with people who actually know how thing work to come up with a solution that is maintainable. Regulation is fine if everyone goes along with it. How effective is the regulation when people cross a state line to purchase what works? How brilliant are the regulators if they didn't forsee that?
Derek
How do you know the regulators didn't forsee that these new burdensome standards would lead to wrinkled clothes (in some cases)? Perhaps they are realists and are weighing the consequences of various forms of behaviour instead?
Comment of the week. And not for the reasons intended by the poster!
My eyeballs nearly fell from the sockets at reading that!
Don't forget the environmentally friendly foam that brought down Space Shuttle Columbia.
I work for a company that engineers, manufactures, and maintains water treatment systems. The phosphorus can be removed from the waste water stream, but it adds cost to the process, a cost which the municipality of Spokane seems unwilling or unable to pass on to their "customers".
Was it ever an option to increase people's sewer bills to pay for phosphorus removal? i.e.: Was there a vote to get a bond to upgrade the water treatment facility, owned and operated by a government entity, to handle the extra phosphorus?
Clothesline.
Megan, with a smile on my face, it's fascinating to watch business journalism collide with libertarian ideology. All organizations suffer from some form of not-invented-here, can't-be-done, that's-not-how-we-do-things in response to innovation. When the domestic auto industry does it and gets rightly pummeled by foreign competition, this blog is satisfied. When the soap, lighting, or plumbing industry does it, unfortunately our planet can't correct the market failure and this blog disapproves.
With minor edits, this post could be adapted to argue why seat belts, smaller cars, and front-wheel drive are bad idea.
The ultimate in legislated morality is the horrifically evil "war on drugs". It has cost untold billions and for what? We help enable violent criminals and narco-terrorists in Mexico to almost overthrow the government. That area is MUCH more ripe for dealing with then silly phosphates. Legalize pot now!
Why don't we have "green products"? Because "green" products probably do not exist to start with. We are talking about changes in degree and not type! The question when it comes to being "green" is - how much can how many people produce and consume without the negative externalities exceeding the positive ones? What technology, with what kind of sustainability footprint, can work for what kind of population?
When Solon introduced the first concepts of democracy into practice ca 500 BC - we totaled about 100 million. We could have easily used detergents with high levels of phosphates and it would have been sustainable. We could have all driven T-Models and H2s and it would have been sustainable.
When Jesus walked the earth 500 years later we totaled ca 200 million - we could still all have used H2s to drive and plenty of phosphates.
In fact - the sustainability problem started in around 1804 when we reached the first billion and started doubling within decades:
Year & population
1804 - 1 billion
1927 - 2 billion
1959 - 3 billion
1974 - 4 billion
1987 - 5 billion
1999 - 6 billion
2008 - 6.8 billion
As you can imagine - it is this trend that defines "green" in 2009. Today - about as many people live with hunger as have existed in total only 200 years ago. Today, more people are overweight or obese than have existed in total only 200 years ago.
Yes - the H2 is much more efficient than the T-Model was. One can claim it has become more clean without even wanting to. The reason why it is not clean - is that the human population has grown faster than the improvements in efficiency. It is easier for a human to have sex and to reproduce than to improve solar energy over night to compete with coal.
I think that many electronic devices have become "green". They consume only a fraction of the initial energy demands and the resources needed for manufacturing are often less than what a stake-diet requires. In theory we could all own iPhones and watch movies, listen to music and surf the internet.
As always - I feel like quoting E O Wilson:
Read on!
The reason why people bought SUVs and trucks is that emissions laws favored small cars but exempted trucks. So people who would have bought large cars bought trucks, instead. The auto companies figured this out and started making trucks with car-like amenities. So cars became small and efficient and trucks remained large and profitable.
As far as E O Wilson's comment goes, we could probably reduce the required footprint per person quite a bit if we did things more intelligently. Right now, "green" activities are often government mandated and not always better. The whole issue of corn ethanol is a great example of how supposedly green initiatives can be wasteful and counter productive.
We could also switch to nuclear power to tremendously decrease the waste carbon output. A government initiative to build nuclear power plants at an aggressive pace would probably do more than a lot of the other initiatives.
On the car front, replacing small, efficient gasoline powered cars with small, efficient hybrids and electric vehicles makes only a small difference. If we replaced large, inefficient trucks (semis?) with hybrids and/or electric vehicles that even made a margina improvement in efficiencly, we'd save a lot more. Going from 40 mpg to 60 mpg saves half as much gasoline as going from 20 mpg to 30 mpg (assuming the same number of miles driven).
I just looked up 18 wheeler mpg and they get anywhere from 4-7 mpg. Improving from 5 mpg to 6 mpg would save over 3,000 gallons per year for an average truck (100,000 miles per year) which is a lot more than your average Prius saves (about 250 gallons per year over a similar compact car for 15,000 miles per year). So why aren't we massively subsidizing efficiency improvements in 18 wheelers instead of compact cars that are already pretty efficient?
'Emissions laws' (mostly CAFE, actually) didn't do that because the government decided we needed SUVs, or as some kind of accident. They did it because Detroit (and some useful idiots in Congress from farm states) pushed for those loopholes.
Got proof? Can you support your claim that Detroit deliberately pushed for the light-truck loophole, rather than just exploiting it?
Here's one such reference:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sport_utility_vehicle
"Author Keith Bradsher, has linked the rise of the SUV directly to American Motors' (AMC) lobbying the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for a waiver to the Clean Air Act: as a result, the EPA designated AMC's compact Cherokee a "light truck", which enabled the company to market it to everyday drivers.[7] This in turn led to the SUV boom when other automakers marketed their own imitators in response to the Cherokee taking sales from their regular cars.[8]"
Primary reference: http://www.powells.com/cgi-bin/biblio?PID=26254&cgi=biblio&show=HARDCOVER:NEW:1586481231:28.00
This is just what I found in three seconds on google. You are welcome to do more.
Hi Earnest, another long one...
Don't you think it funny that on one hand we all argue that government is no good at green initiatives... that regulations are bad.. but that serious CAFE compliance could have saved Detroit. To add to Voice of Reason - was it Detroit's own lobbyists who killed Detroit in the end? If it is true that the farm lobby was involved in the truck loophole - being even more subsidized than Detroit ever was... oh what irony.
And what irony the ethanol story holds. Again - nobody mentions the farm lobby and why this ethanal subsidies project went through while most environmental agencies like Greenpeace where fighting it? Why did this pass while all other sound green policies where ignored? Why were subsides introduced before a market centric CO2 tax or cap & trade? Again - ask "farm" states - the roots of all that is good about America.
I like to think that I am libertarian who prefers policies that are based on market incentives rather than mandates. On my optimistic days I am a cornucopian. But when one looks at the empirical data - it is often the case that pollution grows faster than efficiency improvements. The reason for this is obvious - pollution is not priced properly. The ecology is not priced properly.
Coming back to E O Wilson - it is interesting that his main concern was never nuclear energy or not. You know me by now - show me your business plan for 100% nuclear and I will show you a business plan based on RE that requires only half of your investment and yields a better ROI. No E O Wilson's worry is more organic:
Unless we all want to become vegans - the main challenge is still lowering consumption and the population while trying to improve technological efficiency. Right now we still increase the population with unsustainably technology in place. The "bottleneck" is that we we cannot get people out of poverty without shifting our technologies first. Ok - let all Africans and Indians not use detergents with phosphates.. but we do? Indian cars must have an emission cap but ours don't won't work.
But it is not only about buzz words such as consumption, technology, poverty per se - it is culture? I don't know what is more difficult - humans in the West realizing that they are not the Masters of the Universe or for the world to liberate women? E O Wilson on the matter:
We need for a female pope. The Taliban and Al Qaeda and their equivalents in the West will not like it - but that is what we need next - a female pope and a female US president. Birth control, abortion rights etc will follow naturally.
Huh. And here I thought birth control, abortion on demand, and such got here before a female pope and president, not following them.
My guess is that you live in the West, Spartee? In the US white women were allowed to vote before black men? And yet we have a black male president. Why is there no female pope or at least a "mama"? What is it that men can do that women can't?
Yawn, more Chicken Little doomsayers. The Club of Rome and their ilk made this same argument 30 years and were wrong in every conceivable way. This is even more stupidly wrong because they had the knowledge of the prior wrongly stupid predictions to work from.
In fact, Earth can easily support ten times our current population if resources are used efficiently and productivity gains continue.
TallDave.. or should I say.. Georg Will? Thanks for the feet stamping but you forgot to give some arguments of your own regarding why this all is "stupidly wrong". Show me how to be intelligently right. How can the earth easily support ten times current population?
But I kid.. I know that you don't know. I like the "if" part though in your sentences... we could... if only... yes Dave... if. "if resources are used efficiently" - at least you acknowledge that this is not the case today - not in reality. It could, it might,... it is not!
That is also all that the Club of Rome said 30 years ago.. "If" we continued like this we will total 6-7 billion by the end of the century. Correct. If we continued like this we will experience more climate change and species loss.. Correct. You are all right - unfortunately.
I seriously doubt that the auto industry pushed for CAFE rules on cars so they could sell trucks to people who didn't want them. What most likely happened is Congress enacted CAFE rules so that they could say they were doing something about pollution and fuel efficiency and considered some kind of exception for commercial vehicles or farm vehicles and then the auto industry used/pushed/expanded that loophole so that they could continue to sell people vehicles that they wanted for a profit. Under CAFE, most of the big three sold small cars at a loss to keep their CAFE numbers down so they could recover that loss on the big cars they were still selling (many to police departments) and then sold trucks to everyone else who wanted big cars (but to whom they couldn't sell them because their CAFE numbers would go back down).
The carrying capacity of the Earth is not a fixed number. It depends heavily on technology. Also, asking people to off themselves and/or live a low-tech lifestyle given what we know is going to be very unpopular and will probably fail. Developing nations aren't going to peacefully accept low prosperity for environmental reasons. They're going to continue to modernize as fast as they can. It behooves us to develop technology to allow them to do so rather than try to tell them not to (as that just won't work). Even if we all start using eco-friendly green technologies, poor nations aren't going to necessarily choose to use the same technologies unless they are better. They will most likely use the cheapest technology until they are as rich as we are.
Alternately, we could have more wars and reduce the population but that probably would do more harm to the environment...
People didn't need (or even WANT) big trucks until Detroit manufactured the market for them. Detroit could easily have satisfied demand for big cars, but they would have had to do so while actually satisfying the spirit as well as the loophole-fraught letter of CAFE while competing with the Japanese who were moving up at the same time.
Detroit engaged in behavior practically akin to rent-seeking (abandoning the competitive market in favor of one the Japanese were largely prevented from entering for a long time), and yet the free-market absolutists here want to defend them, because, hey, hippies like fuel economy, so we have to hate it, right?
For decades since then, every time somebody tried to fix CAFE wrt SUVs, what happened? Anybody remember?
Front wheel drive! That is only useful for gutless economy cars that never generate any real acceleration. OK that is probably 90% of the market, but it's only real saving grace is price. It's hardly BETTER.
Uh huh. Wrinkled shirts vs. one thousand people a year dying of cancer or some pulmonary-related disorder. Do I want 'government regulators' deciding this, or the likes of these two?
Thanks for the comment of the year . . . obviously for reasons not intended by this pair ;-) Couldn't have made the case for government regulation any better if I had a staff of 17 and a budget of millions.
Megan:
"In fact, when I look back at almost every "environmentally friendly" alternative product I've seen being widely touted as a cost-free way to lower our footprint, held back only by the indecent vermin at "industry" who don't care about the environment, I notice a common theme: the replacement good has really really sucked compared to the old, inefficient version."
Elizabeth Kolbert, citing Nobel Prize winner Steven Chu:
"Refrigerators consume a lot of energy; all alone, they account for almost fifteen per cent of the average home’s electricity use. In the mid nineteen-seventies, California—the state Chu now lives in—set about establishing the country’s first refrigerator-efficiency standards. Refrigerator manufacturers, of course, fought them. The standards couldn’t be met, they said, at anything like a price consumers could afford. California imposed the standards anyway, and then what happened, as Chu observed, is that “the manufacturers had to assign the job to the engineers, instead of to the lobbyists.” The following decade, standards were imposed for refrigerators nationwide. Since then, the size of the average American refrigerator has increased by more than ten per cent, while the price, in inflation-adjusted dollars, has been cut in half. Meanwhile, energy use has dropped by two-thirds."
Or to put it another way, I would counter Megan's point: "But it's well to remember that there are tradeoffs--that indeed, "industry's" reluctance is probably because they are well aware of what those tradeoffs are."
...by saying:
But it's well to remember that there are negative externalities -- that indeed, "industry's" reluctance is probably because they are well aware that under the present system they do not have to pay for those negative externalities.
Why, we agree, Matt. The point is merely that "industry" doesn't do these things because they're just lazy; they do these things because *the consumers aren't paying the negative externalities*. I'm pretty sure Cascade doesn't give a toss whether my dishes are clean or not; they cater to my demands for cleanliness. I'm not disputing negative externalities--as you must know, I frequently employ them in advocating for a carbon tax. And as I said, in the case of phosphates, they may be underpriced, so we're making the wrong tradeoff. But there *is* a tradeoff.
Well, I'm glad to be in a state of agreement, which is usually more productive than disagreement, if less conducive to blogging. But what I was saying was that it can well be that the reason an industry is not producing an environmentally friendly good isn't due to "tradeoffs" in the sense that environmentally friendly goods will be worse at accomplishing the consumer's goals, but to "tradeoffs" in the sense that in an unregulated environment, there's no reason at all for the industry to produce the environmentally friendly good, because they don't pay the costs generated by the environmental damage. In many cases industries resist regulations simply because regulations are a pain in the ass, and nobody likes pains in the ass. (I think here for example of Dutch pig farmers and the incredibly irritating steps they are required to undertake to cope with their pig crap, which are unfortunately necessary if the Netherlands is to avoid being buried in what the Dutch evocatively term "stront".) I would imagine that economists would posit that "pains in the ass" will end up being expressed as monetary cost in some fashion. But I don't think this is necessarily true: think, for example, of the shift in US public behavior from widespread littering in the '50s to almost no littering (by global standards) since the '80s. What is the cost of not littering? In 1958, the requirement to find a trash can would probably have seemed like quite a time-wasting pain in the ass that could have been expressed in man-hours and described as some moderate sacrifice to the economy. Today, I'm pretty sure that we would think of such a calculation as ridiculous.
Given that there aren't any negative externalities in the first quote, let me add another possible reason for opposition: companies - established companies - as a general rule aren't fond of innovation. That's spending money on a chancy outcome (it also explains some of Big Pharma's practices.) If research into a new, improved product pans out, great; if not, you've been put at a disadvantage wrt your competitors. And these established companies, as it's been pointed out on another thread, don't tend to have the science types at the helm. The people who can evaluate the risks of such innovation, the tradeoffs, the costs vs. the benefits. No, what you have are the MBA types who tend not to be good at math, and who prefer the more intelligible advice of the bean counters. And after all, what the bean counters offer up as counsel seems more of a sure thing.
Why would the automakers voluntarily subject themselves to higher costs selling big cars that met the CAFE rules for more money when they could sell a truck that did not meet the CAFE rules (and other rules) for less money? That would be stupid.
Congress passed the CAFE laws and should have passed more intelligent laws without loopholes you could literally drive a truck through. And whenever anyone talked about closing the loopholes OF COURSE the automakers lobbied to keep them open.
But ALL of this was to satisfy the demand for larger cars. Many people don't like tiny little cars. And many people NEED a bigger car or truck. The automakers do not care about the size of the car, per se... they care about what people are willing to pay and apparently people have been willing to pay for bigger vehicles, one way or another. And in the face of CAFE laws, automakers figured out how to satisfy this desire while still making as much profit as possible.
Automakers are meeting a demand, not creating it. They may meet the demand in various ways but ultimately, they must sell cars that people are willing to pay for. When government regulations influence the market, automakers respond in a way to make themselves as much money as possible. But they can only make money if they sell cars that people will buy.
Low flow toilets: When I remodeled my house a few years ago, my wife was determined that we would not get stuck with low flow toilets. In discussing the topic with our plumber, we discovered that the old high flow toilets are still available - for export. Well, we live in Miami so there are plenty of plumbing supply houses with inventory available for export. So, we bought two high flow toilets for export. There was some paperwork which the supply house workman helped us complete. Since we happen to live on Haitian Drive, in the block for country exported to he suggested we write in....Haiti. When I asked him the chances of getting caught his reply was, "I ain't never run across no toilet police." Another way around the low flow toilet option is to buy old toilets from places that sell salvaged building materials. As far as I know, there is no law against re-using the older toilets.