Misguided Environmentalism: How EPA killed the American Auto and gave rise to imports
There is something about the classic automotive which has always perplexed me. How did our elders survive in a world filled with leaded gasoline, clouded smoggy streets, and polluted rivers filled of raw sewage? I’ve read many books and articles on automotive history, but I seldom read about the politics which have shaped the automotive world we live in today. That is what interests me most. In writing this that is what I set out to do. Some questions I challenged myself to debate. Is it really true that gasoline cars are toxic for the planet? Is it really true that regulations put on emissions saved the planet? We talk of pending climate change and doom, and the question become if these rules had actually worked why are we still handing towards climate catastrophe? Is breathing in leaded gasoline or carbon monoxide really dangerous to our health? Some folks I had spoken with seemed to have opposing opinions and arguments, so I wanted to get down to the historical fact. What actually has shaped how we drive on the road today, and is it working?
“I have read that woodpeckers are very sensitive to pollution and go to where the air is cleanest. When I grew up in New York City there used to be woodpeckers in the neighborhood. I bet there hasn’t been a woodpecker in New York in over 50 years.” — Becky Hanson
In 1886 Carl Benz would revolutionize the world with the first gasoline automobile. Within two decades Henry Ford would discover a way to mass produce the first production line of Model T’s putting 26 million cars on the road by the end of the 1920’s. America were the pioneers of travel.This entered us into a brave new world of freedom to travel anywhere in the nation by the mid century as we constructed Interstate Highways, and phased out the outdated mode of travel by steam engine. The popularity of the automobile quickly spread around the world after seeing America’s success story.
More importantly these gasoline engines posed less risk to the environment in terms of CO2 emissions, and were more powerful and more energy efficient than the cars we have on the road today. What? Does that sound a little backwards? It is commonly believed that automobiles from years past produced toxic emissions that were giving Americans cancer and lead poisoning. Those Pontiac and Cadillac “big blocks” were so terrible for the environment. They polluted our atmosphere they say. I believe this is a common misunderstanding of how a car’s engine operates to begin with. Let us take a closer look under the hood and examine the politics driving emissions standards. If you want to understand environmental history, you have to go back to the 70’s again at the height of the environmental movement.
In 1969 Richard Nixon entered office on the promise to clean up our rivers and clean up our airways to appease the “darn hippies” to keep them quiet about the war. He would go onto sign landmark bills creating the Environmental Protection Agency, Endangered Species Act, 1972 Clean Water Act, and the 1970 Clear Air Act which gave powers to the EPA to enforce National Ambient Air Quality Standards or NAAQS.
One of the issues plaguing cities like Los Angeles for many decades was smog. Defeating smog received bipartisan support because it was a visible enemy. It received easy bipartisan support from both Republicans and Democrats who didn’t want to lose their seats in office, and it didn’t involve getting behind legalizing a dangerous narcotic that the hippies used, or getting in the middle of the divisive debate around the Vietnam War. This was an easy political victory to get behind, as who wouldn’t support breathing better air? After fighting for decades for anti-smog legislation on the federal level, President Nixon pressed his new EPA with making an “add-on” that could attach to an exhaust pipe and eliminate the problem for future generations.
That add-on was labeled the “catalytic converter” and considered a scientific breakthrough. It successfully improved air quality in cities in a dramatic way by using a particulate filter. Part of the reason why we had to switch to unleaded gas. Americans could see again while driving, and perhaps breathe again. However there was a catch, because as you know progress is never linear. Not only that but one of the main arguments was to prevent suicide. By government regulating the use of catalytic converters, it was a safety feature added to cars to prevent consumers from dying from either intentional or accidental carbon monoxide poisoning, after a series of lawsuits against the autos industry during the 1960s. It had almost nothing to do with saving the environment. This was one of the main motivators of getting General Motors to add this feature into their new filters added to exhausts.
Please don’t try this at home, but modern gasoline cars are almost suicide and accident proof and that’s how it’s intended to be. If you left a car running in an enclosed garage without a catalytic converter, you would be dead in ten minutes. With modern vehicles it would take days to suffocate from CO2. That is sort of the point, it’s a safety feature like the check engine “idiot” light. If I was wrong, every mechanic garage in the country would have CO alarms going off every time a car started. Studies have shown that since 1980 the rate of deaths by CO poisoning has decreased dramatically since converters were fit on cars.
“There has been a decrease in both fatal and non-fatal intentional CO poisoning from motor vehicle exhaust since the 1980s. This correlates with reductions in vehicle CO emissions and is a likely result of the U.S. Clean Air Act of 1970 and the application of catalytic converters since 1975” — Undersea Hyperb Med Mar-Apr 2015;42(2):159–64.
How do I know that consumer safety was one of the main reasons for converting carbon monoxide to carbon dioxide and not necessarily about saving the planet? CO does not create smog despite common belief. Smog is developed from sulfur particulates in gasoline and we have solved this by producing low sulfur gasoline. In the year 2000 the EPA mandated that sulphur content be reduced by 90% in commercial gasoline. In modern years it’s now down to less than 10 parts per million. There is simply no point to using catalytic converters anymore. If it was simply unnecessary I would not be sounding the alarm, but is it in fact harmful to our planet?
This invention entered the automobile industry by a storm, and not all of it was met with a happy response. Today we often take for granted the parts on our cars that keep them running from day to day. More and more Americans are less involved with maintenance or understanding of how their vehicle works. If you read old literature from when these started being forced on American automobiles though it was originally met with great restraint. You really have to dig up old newspaper articles to find any remanence of this. On the front page of the Rapid City Journal, a South Dakota newspaper read the headline “Catalytic converters boon or hazard?” along with Motor Trend magazine, outlining the possibility that the catalytic converter may cause the emission of even more toxic pollutants than it removes.
“As early as June 1973, pre-liminary studies were reported to have shown that small particles or platinum and palladium may be getting into exhaust gases as they pass over the catalyst bed. Then, as the fine particles emerge from the tailpipe, they may lodge in human lungs.” — Rapid City Journal (10/05/1975)
In 1972 a Ford Motor Company official warned the EPA that the sulfur present in gasoline could be oxidized to sulfuric acid over the catalytic converter bed. This obviously caused quite a dilemma within the EPA and Senator Muskie’s subcommittee on environment. Researchers discovered that the devices also convert the small amount of sulfur present in gasoline into sulfate particles and sulfuric acid mist. This was at a time when sulfur content in gasoline was much higher than it is today. Sulfur was ultimately reduced in gasoline not because of environmental concerns, but because of the mandate of the catalytic converter. In March of 1975, EPA’s then-administrator Russel E. Train made the following statement to this Senate committee, essentially proclaiming to let’s ignore the problems and maybe they will go away.
“I think that unless we are willing to either sweep the sulfate problem under the rug or hold it at arm’s length somehow, I see no alternative but the decision, unhappy as it is, of keeping the interim standards for this 1977 year, which is what I have ordered.” — 1977 EPA Statment
The editorial team in the Missoulian of Montana took out an entire page to warn their readers about the misconceptions about catalytic converters.
“About a decade ago, EPA brainwashed the nation that catalytic converters would eliminate a vehicle’s dangerous polluting emissions by converting them to harmless carbon dioxide (greenhouse effect?) and water, thus purifying the air we breathe. I even remember posters and advertisements that showed flowers sprouting from catalytic converters.” — The Missoulian (4/25/1984)
The mandate was originally shown with large disapproval and non cooperation from the American public. The Sciences May/June 1982 wrote that EPA surveys found evidence of tampering in about one-half of the cars examined, and gross tampering in about a quarter of them. Car and Driver, May 1983 wrote that one of every five cars on the road, according to Environmental Protection Agency surveys, has had its emissions controls removed or altered. Specifically, almost half the offending automobiles in America have had their catalytic converters pried off. This did not change until EPA started going after the mom and pop mechanics and garages themselves that were told originally it would be an optional mandate. The 1990 Clean Air Act amendments finally prohibited private individuals from installing “converter replacement pipes” on their own vehicles.
“Recently I received a letter from a small muffler-shop owner in Lakeland, Fla, requesting my assistance, as the EPA had fined his shop $55,000 for removing 22 catalytic converters from vehicles that the owners had wanted removed: some from police vehicles. A small portion of the material that I had acquired, and previously furnished EPA, helped back down EPA in their million and-a-half dollar lawsuit against the Atlantic Ritchfield Company several years ago, for the same offense. I was subsequently informed that EPA dropped their charges because of fear of publicity.” — The Missoulian (4/25/1984)
Moreover there was a very real risk that is still admitted to be true to this day, that catalytic converters posed a very real fire risk. By the EPA’s own admission, surface temperatures on properly functioning catalytic converters are about 500 degrees. Engine or exhaust system malfunctions can cause those temperatures to rise dramatically. Forest Service researchers disconnected a spark plug wire on a converter-equipped car. Subsequently, the section of tailpipe located just behind the converter rose to more than 1,000 degrees in several tests reported below. Common sense should tell anyone that a hot piece of metal only five or six inches above the ground and operating at temperatures of up to 1,200 to 1,800 degrees poses an obvious wildlife-starting risk several magnitudes greater than vehicles without one. Available literature documents catalytic converter temperatures exceeding 3,200 degrees, with an engine malfunction. This is over 1,000 degrees hotter than the lava from Hawaii’s volcanos, an obvious threat to vehicles and its occupants that was swept under the rug, especially early adopters. One serviceman interviewed below said he heard of a converter getting so hot it melted the paint inside the bed of a pickup, and said an oily rag placed under a converter was ignited.
“Kissinger, chief of the Truckee Meadows Fire Protection District, said he might have to close some roads because of the new anti-pollution device. He said if people get into the cheatgrass off the road, it will cause a fire. He sees the catalytic converter as potentially more of a fire hazard than the muffler and says his department won’t buy any trucks requiring no-lead gasoline.” — Reno Gazette-Journal (5/31/1975)
“I became involved with catalytic converters in January 1975, because of their extreme fire-starting potential. This was an inherent responsibility of my job in the U.S Forest Service regional office here in Missoula fire precent. I started collecting fire reports from acquaintances, colleagues and various other contacts to support my contention regarding their fire risk. These were furnished to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the EPA and others. It soon became quite obvious that these agencies did not want to receive additional proof that catalytic converters were causing fires.” — Floyd R. Cowles (U.S Forest 1975 Statment)
The change came at the disadvantage of the American autos industry, as just a few years prior engine performance had been the main priority. Now it was a focus on fuel economy heading into and out of the oil crisis. It was during this era where the “big three” began to lose their dominance to imports. You can look at Ford as a great example. The output for 460 engines built before 1972 was 365 horsepower at 4,600 rpm and 485 pound-feet of torque at 2,800 rpm. The compression ratio was 10.5:1, and fuel delivery was by an Autolite four-barrel carburetor. The output for the same 460 starting in 1972 was 212 horsepower at 4,400 rpm and 342 pound-feet of torque at 2,600 rpm. The compression ratio was lowered to 8.5:1, and the carburetor was a Motorcraft four-barrel unit. After the mid-1980s, carburetors were replaced with electronic fuel injection with an output of 245 horsepower and 400 pound-feet of torque. While although fuel economy was saved, the price difference of more expensive unleaded gasoline more than made up the difference. More incredible and importantly, the catalyst would be a combination of relatively rare platinum and palladium that were available from only two places — the Soviet Union and South Africa. For 1975 models it added between $100 and 150 to the price tag of buying an American auto. When you include when the 1981 emissions standards kicked in, that added an additional $200–400 cost to every vehicle in 1980s money. Even more cumbersome was the fact that many gas stations in operation did not even carry unleaded fuel.
This was reflected in automotive sales as now these big sluggish boats made by the Americans were slow and inefficient as horsepower was made illegal. In 1950 there were only 21,287 imported cars sold on American roads. By 1977, imports eclipsed the 2 million-unit mark post emissions standards, to modern times where almost half of vehicles sold today are imports.
Many believe that the Japanese were just simply better at making cars as is commonly told, but at the time the EPA had decided to only enforce emissions standards on American vehicles. Consumers found they could obtain imports at a much lower cost and began to ditch their American pride. This is what manufactures like Honda and Toyota did for an entire decade to skirt around emissions standards and safety loopholes, as smaller cars instead of full size vehicles did not have to follow the same rules. This led President Reagan to placing the 25 year import ban we all know of today after the American manufactures like Chrysler and GM fell into bankruptcy. Written into law even to this day was that the following motor vehicles may be imported by any person and do not have to be shown to be in compliance with emission requirements before they are entitled to admissibility. Highway motorcycles that were manufactured before 1978 which is why Honda motor bikes took off. New motor vehicles intended solely for export to a country. Any motor vehicle imported for purposes of national security. Any motor vehicle imported by anyone qualifying for a “hardship exemption”.
When even more stricter emissions rules kicked in 1990 after we had gone two terms under Reagan with no changes, the big three automakers had a decision to make. They could meet the standard by building more expensive technology into their cars and raising prices, or by exploiting legal loopholes. What Ford and GM pursued was exploring legal loopholes.
“The foreign manufacturers who make only small cars don’t have to worry about meeting mileage standards, so they can de-tune their engines for optimum pollution control and sacrifice a few miles a gallon. It doesn’t matter to us (EPA) which way the emissions are cleaned up, as long as the job is done.” — Washington Post (8/29/1979)
“It will still look as American as a Big Mac, but something odd is going to happen to the Ford Crown Victoria: It is going to become a foreign car. Some people think that is outrageous. The reason for the change is CAFE or corporate average fuel economy. Ford intendeds to solve the problem when it redesigns the large Crown Victoria and its sister ship, the Mercury Grand Marquis, by reclassifying them as imports. — The Modesto Bee (7/28/1989)
The big three automakers began signing deals with foreign competitors to bring in small sized imports under domestic name but made overseas to skirt around CAFE emissions laws so they wouldn’t go completely bankrupt. Ford did this by downsizing and reclassifying the Crown Victoria and Mercury Grand Marquee as imports and moving much of the parts production overseas. That did not require moving the assembly plant lock, stock, and drill press from North America to a foreign land. It did however require changing its “domestic content” to below 75 percent and later lowered to 50 percent. At that time those Fords had above 90 percent domestic content and had to be deliberately cheapened in quality as a cost cutting measure to please regulators. One of the easiest ways of doing this was by increasing the amount of plastic used replacing American steel. This was the beginning of American cars adopting the exact look of foreign competitors, and also imports showing up in America such as the Mercury Tracer and Geo Prizm. We moved to an era where imports and American vehicles could no longer be told apart, and ultimately the reason why today over half of the parts you can find in a domestic American car are not actually made inside of the United States. This both saved auto manufactures money by cutting corners, weakened the UAW’s ability to negotiate better terms, and all of this was mandated by government law through the EPA with little regard for American pride.
However could all of this been avoided entirely? It was reported in a 1979 article in the Associated Press that automobiles fitted with redesigned long-path intake manifold for more even charging of the cylinder, and knock sensors similar to what they used in Europe would have allowed American autos to meet 1980s emissions standards using leaded gasoline without the use of a catalytic converter. However by then companies like GM and Ford had already invested substantial amounts of funding to invent their smog control device and establish connections with foreign markets to purchase rare earth minerals. They were not about to give up an entire decade of research and science even if they were wrong. As it stands, the continued use of the catalytic converter was based on a lie.
“In the early 1970s, no one believed it was possible to meet government standards for automobile emissions in 1976 and later without catalytic converters, which require unleaded gasoline. Now Ethyl says its technology, borrowing heavily from European work and under development for six years, will allow cars to use leaded fuel while easily meeting the 1979 requirements for emissions seeing a reported 80% to 85% reduction in emissions from 1970 levels.” — The State (9/28/1980)
Chrysler at the time was working on their own alternative. It was nicknamed “lean burn”. They looked like this above, and came equipped with a Carter Thermoquad. They were sometimes labeled “spark control” or “fuel control”. Chrysler pioneered a first of its kind technology for 1976 model year. It worked by adjusting the spark timing to create a “smooth”, “even running” and “truly responsive acceleration”, to permit the burning of leaded or unleaded fuel without the need for a catalytic converter like Ford and GM had adopted. When working you could get up to 30 mpg with a high gear ratio. That is why many Chrysler vehicles throughout the 1970s did not require a catalytic converter. A mistake they may had made which gave them a bad reputation was its placement of the analog computer system with dual pickups in the distributor, causing overheating issues overtime. However by 1978 model year Chrysler had upgraded to solid state boards not sensitive to heat and solved the problem. Chrysler ultimately relented and went the way of GM and Ford when the converters became mandated by law in the next decade, ironically reducing mileage of full size vehicles. Many are surprised to find their classic Chrysler in their collection did not originally come equipped with a catalytic converter.
Now it would be one argument if doing all of this was really benefiting our planet and a necessary evil. Could it in fact be doing the opposite though? So what exactly was the advertised purpose of mandating the converters in the first place. Let’s take a closer look at the science behind how one actually works. A catalytic converter works by changing the car’s output of carbon monoxide to “harmless” carbon dioxide, and thus improving air quality in theory. Instead of breathing smog of CO on the highways, Americans are now breathing CO2 behind the car in front of you. However the catch is that CO is not a direct greenhouse gas, CO2 is a greenhouse gas. CO2 emissions increase because of oxidation of the carbon monoxide released into carbon dioxide. Mandating the converters have added up to 7–10% more CO2 emissions per vehicle on the road today. Overtime that extra CO2 adds up.
Another byproduct of gasoline engines are various nitrogen oxides which most are not direct greenhouse gases. A catalytic converter’s job is to convert nitrogen oxides into pure nitrogen and oxygen, but along the way it produces an extra amount of nitrous oxide which is not only a huge direct greenhouse gas but it also depletes ozone. Well as you can image small amounts add up over time, and scientists have been keeping track of how much is accumulating from modern cars.
Thing is you have to go back in time to find truth spoken about this subject. It’s certainly not very popular to talk about in the media today.
“This spring, the E.P.A. published a study estimating that nitrous oxide (300 times more potent than carbon dioxide) now accounts for about 7.2 percent of the gases that cause global warming. — New York Times (1998)
The New York Times article above is from the year 1998. N2O now accounts for over 7% of greenhouse gasses in our atmosphere.
In order to find those real facts you have to go back to research journals from 1992. From the Journal of the Air & Waste Management Association. Autos fitted with no catalytic converter produce significantly less N20.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/10473289.1992.10466971
What’s most alarming is this study. The current N2O ppb in our atmosphere is 331.1. According to this paper in 1991 it was 310 ppb. With more cars on the road than ever before this should be a serious concern for environmentalists.
If you want to find this information today though it’s very much hidden within the Energy Department’s website for the United States. EPA originally estimated that nitrous oxide contribution from catalytic equipped cars in the United States were responsible for half of our total production, but it’s since been toned down noting at the bottom of that New York Times article that it could represent closer to 2% of 7% or even less. The EIA now moved transportation into the Energy category under a subcategory known as “mobile combustion”. The latest document published in 2009 was a study going back 20 years, which showed that nitrous oxide emissions from catalytic converters represented 13% of nitrous oxide emissions produced by the United States alone in that year. Still a significant amount.
Emissions of Greenhouse Gases in the United States 2009
Not to mention that we replaced carbon monoxide with a gaseous chemical that is perhaps even more dangerous to breath. Ammonia gas. The root of the problem may be catalytic converters that work too well. When nitrogen oxide from the engine’s exhaust is “over-reduced,” a complex chemical reaction ensues. Ammonia gas (NH3) forms in the catalytic converter, which is then emitted from the vehicle’s tailpipe. This leads to a gas that is even more dangerous than carbon monoxide to inhale. Researchers, led by Robert Harley, Ph.D., a professor at the University of California-Berkeley, found unexpectedly high levels of ammonia in the vehicles’ exhaust. Reported in the Eurekalert newsletter from the year 2000 that has since been taken offline, found in the waybackmachine is an interesting discussion about this issue.
Catalytic converters fix one pollution problem, cause another
“The same catalytic converters credited with reducing harmful pollution from automobiles may themselves produce large quantities of haze-causing ammonia, according to a report in the September 1 issue of Environmental Science & Technology, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Chemical Society, the world’s largest scientific society.” — AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY (2000 statement)
“I am confident that if the catalytic converters were not being used, we wouldn’t see the high ammonia emissions that we saw.” — Robert Harley, Ph.D (UC Berkley)
We also must remember though that smog of the past didn’t appear in large numbers every day. I spoke with older residents of Los Angeles who told me that a “smog day” as they would call it would happen about five times a year. That is one of the largest myths that smog no longer happens either. Since the city of Los Angeles sit in a low basin surrounded by mountains, emissions can turn into cloud and build up. Today there are days when residents in recent years have experienced what was described as the “worst smog in decades”. The year 2020 will instead go down as one of Southern California’s smoggiest in decades. Once the air-cleansing March weather went away, the region plunged into a late spring and summer with intense heat waves that contributed to the worst ozone pollution readings and highest number of bad air days since the mid-1990s. This is with California’s electric mandate.
We also need to mention that a car’s O2 sensors are programmed to feed a catalytic converter. A catalytic converter itself has to be at above a certain temperature to work, or it will simply get clogged and plug your exhaust. That means on modern vehicles the engine is programmed to run rich most of the time to keep it hot. This is noticeable when you are stopped at a traffic light. If you programmed your O2 sensor to run your engine lean most of the time, you could increase your gas mileage by 5–10% and get better horsepower. It’s called the stylometric fuel ratio.
Heading into the 1990s it would be the EPA that would not only target the auto industry themselves anymore, but the gasoline being used as fuel. Under the Bush Sr. administration’s EPA in the winter of 1992–1993, the EPA mandated the use of “cleaner-burning” oxygenated fuel in 39 metro areas, including downstate New York and Los Angeles to control carbon monoxide and smog. The additive first started to be used in small amounts in gasoline since 1979, when it was introduced as a substitute for lead, which was being phased out under orders from the EPA. Demand for the chemical soared after Congress approved the 1990 amendments to the federal Clear Air Act. The theory was motor vehicles fueled by oxygenated gas emit less smog-producing compounds from their tailpipes than those fueled by non-oxygenated gas. Gasoline that contained MTBE burned more completely in a car’s engine, reducing emissions of material that isn’t fully combusted, such as carbon monoxide. A few refiners chose ethanol as their oxygenator, but the industry’s overwhelming choice was MTBE. MTBE was shown to reduce gas milage by 2%, but it also had a major environmental concern. This environmental scare was a self inflicted wound by the EPA themselves, for if they had never mandated it this would have never happened to begin with.
“Nothing in Glennville has been the same since October, when state officials told its astonished residents that the water they were driving at Grizzly’s and in many of their own kitchen taps contained startlingly high quantities of MTBE, a gasoline additive mandated by the EPA that reduces air pollution but is contaminating drinking water in communities from Santa Monica to Montauk. Underground gasoline plumes were seeping beneath homes when resident smelled MTBE’s turpentine-like odor in their backyard and basements.” — Newsday (8/24/1998)
“Myron Mehlman, a toxicologist in New Jersey who formerly worked for Mobil Oil, said he has documented more than 1,000 cases of health problems attributed to MTBE exposure since 1993. In a survey of workers at refineries where MTBE is blended with gasoline, he said, 91 percent of the workers reported headaches, and half complained of breathing problems. Last winter, Mehlman also studies more than 200 motorists who complained of symptoms after exposure to MTBE. He said 80 percent reported heartaches, and 63 percent reported lightheadedness.” — Hartford Courant (8/31/1995)
The grumbling began almost immediately after the cold-weather gas 7 months out of the year started being sold in late 1992. In New York and some other places, drivers complained that the new fuel was costing them an extra 10 cents per gallon or more, and that they weren’t able to go as far on a tank of gas. The big MTBE controversy began when found to be a problem at gas station’s underground storage tanks leaking into groundwater. When the new gasoline was introduced, people began to complain about the strong odors they smelled at the gas pump. A few states including Alaska, North Carolina and New Jersey, became hotbeds of MTBE complaints, with hundreds of consumers reporting headaches, nausea and other symptoms. Many joined local chapters of a new, loosely organized anti-MTBE group called Oxy-Busters, which quickly grew to have chapters in 15 states and five countries. In North Carolina, the state health department ran radio advertisements warning motorists to pull over if they felt faint after pumping MTBE, and Alaska even defied the EPA and banned MTBE in the state. Still the EPA continued to endorse the chemical and in 1995 mandated the sale of year-round reformulated gas in about a dozen metro areas, including New York and Long Island. Most refiners then chose to use MTBE and began selling a 12 month gasoline blend that contained 11% MTBE.
The incident that transformed MTBE into a national issue came in 1996, when city officials in Santa Monica discovered that leaks from gas stations and pipelines had contaminated most of the water supply for the glitzy beachfront community of 86,000 people. Other California cities began looking for MTBE in their water and quickly found it. MTBE was even ending up in snow and rainfall. The EPA and MTBE industry, which had already spent $7 billion in the 1990s to retool gasoline refineries were not forced to backtrack. In 1999, California Gov. Gray Davis issued an executive order to ban MTBE by December of 2002. In 2000, New York Gov. George Pataki followed suit, signing a law banning the chemical beginning in 2004. Even though the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment concluded that there was no evidence the chemical passed a cancer threat to human beings, and that MTBE leeching into municipal water supplies was entirely attributable to the failure of oil companies to keep their underground storage facilities properly maintained and not automobiles on the road. In fact, when those underground tanks leak, the biggest danger to the water supply, the biggest threat to health was not MTBE, but benzene and toluene, two chemicals also found in gasoline that are indisputably cancer-causing. In that regard did the EPA solve a crisis that didn’t exist that was created to solve another crisis that didn’t exist when we look at the facts? If the argument is that MTBE is a carcinogen (no proof), then it replaced lead which is not classified as a human carcinogen. It becomes a moot point.
“Here’s the gist, however: If not for a government mandate, it is highly unlikely that MTBE would ever have been added to gasoline in the United States. Thus the government and we’ll assume the motivation was good, is more responsible than the industry for the pollution of water supplies by MTBE.” — The Texas Monitor (2/23/2004)
“The state’s own measurements, however showed that hazardous levels of carbon monoxide pollution already had virtually disappeared from New York before the oxygenated fuel program started, thank to tougher tailpipe emission controls and inspections. In upper Manhattan, the last place in the state where hazardous levels of carbon monoxide were measured, the number of violation days fell from 71 in 1985 to just two in 1992, the year before the fuel program began. On Long Island, there have been no violations since 1987. In contrast, ozone smog, a kind of pollution that isn’t alleviated very much by the cold-weather oxygenated has, has been a continuing problem in the metro area. In Western Long Island, for example, there have been at least 35 days since 1987 when ozone smog reached hazardous levels.” — Nassau Newsday (9/26/1994)
This prompted Bush in 2005 to mandate that 10% ethanol be placed in all gasoline in the United States after meeting with farmer lobbyists from Iowa. A huge gift to corn farmers, a bad gift for the environment and classic car owners that rebuild carburetors like myself. Pure gasoline is 33% more powerful than ethanol. Right on the EPA’s website it says that adding ethanol to gasoline reduces gas mileage even more by 3–6%. If you include “flex fuel” E85 gasoline, that goes down to a reduction of 20–25% gas milage. Ethanol production is a “net loss” process requiring more fuel to produce than it yields, which in turn increases pollution. If you run 10 gallons of oil to produce 12 to 16 gallons of ethanol, that would mean a total of 22 to 26 gallons of fuel would be burned. There’s no way to make that clean. It increases corrosion and vehicle wear and leads to premature part failure, which in turn requires more recycling processes, parts production, etc. This is seen more quickly in small engines than in large, but the materials used are the same regardless (aluminum, steel, rubber, etc.). Not taking into account the land and pesticides needed to grow corn. Not even beginning to mention what it does to small twin engines. Leaded gasoline allows greater gas mileage in cars and it takes 5%–7% less crude oil to make leaded than unleaded gasoline of the same octane rating. Isn’t that better for the environment by the way?
The new ethanol requirement would now almost certainly mean higher pump prices for motorists on the West and East coasts. 98% of the nation’s ethanol plants are located in Corn Belt states like South Dakota. That means ethanol has to be transported by rail to the two coasts at no small expense. The added cost from reduced gas mileage and more crude used in the refinery according to Associated Press amounted to $12 billion a year in the 1990s. This did not sit well with lawmakers representing the nation’s two most populous states.
“Unconscionable, selfish, and parochial. — Senator Dianne Feinstein (2002 Statement)
“It will hurt consumers dramatically.” — Senator Chuck Schumer (2002 Statement)
“Yet, New York and California lawmakers have only themselves to blame for having a new ethanol mandate forced upon their states. For they allowed themselves to be duped by the environmental left, blithely going along with a ban on the gasoline additive methyl tertiary ether (MTBE), which is as clean-burning as ethanol, but far more economical.” — The Daily Reporter (5/03/2002)
“The most perverse aspect of the ethanol mandate is that it’s supposed to help family farmers in the Corn Belt. But the reality is that the biggest beneficiaries will be a cartel of ethanol producers. In fact, eight companies control 71% of the ethanol market, according to the General Accounting Office, and one company, Archer Daniels Midland, controls 41%.” — The Daily Reporter (5/03/2002)
“We concluded that the high-end cancer risk from exposure to MTBE in drinking water is lower than the risks from all the other VOCs evaluated and several thousand times lower than the risks from exposure to naturally occurring constituents, including arsenic, radium, and radon.” — Society for Risk Analysis (12/03/2020)
So that means if you add the 10% extra CO2 from catalytic converters, 7–10% reduced gas milage from lost engine efficiency, and 3–6% reduced gas mileage from ethanol (not counting E85), that adds up to 23–26% extra CO2 emissions from each car ever year due to EPA regulations and burning an increase of 10% barrels of oil to produce ethanol. Including producing 20 times the amount of nitrous oxide out of modern vehicles, which has increased the amount of nitrous oxide in our atmosphere by 13% since 1976, and making it more costly for average Americans to drive on the road.
Gasoline also used to have a much longer shelf life of sometimes years. Your grandfather is right when he tells you gasoline is not what it used to be. Modern ethanol absorbs water droplets in the air and turns gasoline gummy after 1–2 months of inactive use. There is no reason why we can’t have unleaded gasoline that does not contain ethanol like we had from 1975–2005, and perhaps we have traded CO for something much worse. In 2020 Massachusetts and Minnesota are the only two states that allow ethanol free blends to be sold at the pump for vehicles.
Let’s put these comments into some amount of perspective. Remember President Regan’s statement about “killer trees”? In the year 1984 as reported in the Missoulian, natural sources were responsible for 83% of total hydrocarbons (87% of reactive photochemical HCs), 89% of total carbon monoxide, and 96% of total nitrogen oxides pollutants. If you multiplied the remaining minimal man-caused percentages by statistics (for both stationary and mobile sources) obtained from another EPA report that lists the automobile’s share as being responsible for 24% HC, 51% CO, and 15% NOx levels we obtain an eve better perspective. These calculations then convert to 4% for HC, 5–6% for CO, and 0.6% for NOx from automobiles before the catalytic converters were mandated. The question becomes, was it ever really a problem to begin with or did we create a problem in order to solve it?
The Diesel Engine
The diesel engine is another phenomenon that originally produced far less carbon emissions, but not the case anymore thanks to new EPA laws.
In 1878 Rudolf Diesel drew up the designs for the first production line Diesel engines in Germany, and by 1914 Winton Motors and Fairbanks Morse were making diesel engines for the first semi rig trucks in America.
In 1967 Mercedes would bring their own diesel cars over to America, and in 1978 Dodge and General Motors released the first diesel pickups in America. Diesel has better mileage over long distances that gas and why it was used by truck drivers. Overnight night into the 1980s they became a large success to consumers and thus the need for new environmental EPA regulations.
By itself diesel engines burn off three gasses during combustion. CO2, unfortunately nitrous oxides which do actually heat up our atmosphere, and carbon monoxide which are not all direct greenhouse gases. Until the EPA got their hands on diesel engines they posed no risk for ozone depletion and produced less greenhouse gases. In 1985 however diesel trucks were equipped with their own version of a catalytic converter for the first time. This you guessed it converted carbon monoxide released to CO2.
On top of the direct greenhouse gasses produced by extra CO2 output of modern diesel exhaust systems, the EPA now mandates that all diesel engines require what is called diesel exhaust fluid or DEF for short. In an attempt to reduce the amount of nitrous oxides increased from cats. It’s commonly hidden under the guise of “diesel fluid” or “diesel liquid” at the pump.
“In 2018, nitrous oxide comprised about 6.5 percent of atmospheric greenhouse gas emissions, compared with carbon dioxide at 82 percent, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Nitrous oxide, however, is an ozone-depleting gas with a global warming potential more than 300 times greater than carbon dioxide, said Caranto. Nitric oxide also contributes to ground-level ozone and produces acid rain.” — Cornell University
With good intentions however as it turns out one of the main ingredients of DEF is urea ranging from 40–50%. Urea is produced at fertilizer plants as one of the byproducts of commercial fertilization. The production of DEF is going towards an industry that sets record high methane emissions that were found to exceed EPA guidelines which are the second worst greenhouse gas.
Fertilizer plants emit 100 times more methane than reported
“Using a Google Street View car equipped with a high-precision methane sensor, the researchers discovered that methane emissions from ammonia fertilizer plants were 100 times higher than the fertilizer industry’s self-reported estimate. They also were substantially higher than the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimate for all industrial processes in the United States.”
So let us wrap this entanglement around our heads. In an effort to reduce N20 that is 300 times worse than CO2, the EPA now mandates commonly nicknamed “snake oil” that is 100 times worse than CO2 during the manufacturing process. Can you wrap your head around that?
Wait there’s more. Agricultural fertilizer produces nitric oxide, which soil can turn into nitrous oxide Cornell University reports.
https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2017/07/nitric-oxide-plays-key-role-forming-potent-greenhouse-gas
“In this new study, the chemists found that hydroxylamine is converted into another intermediary — nitric oxide — which under normal soil conditions acts as the chemical prelude to nitrite. But under imperfect soil conditions, nitric oxide is converted into the potent greenhouse gas nitrous oxide.” — Cornell University
So in order to manufacture DEF, one of the main ingredients requires a manufacturing process that can lead to nitrous oxide emissions. Isn’t that what diesel exhaust fluid was trying to reduce in the first place?
The EPA reports that 29% of greenhouse emissions come from transportation directly, and 22% from industrial plants such as fertilizer production. This is all to point out the ramifications of modern and misguided environmental laws. If we eliminated the catalytic converter and DEF in diesel fuel, America would have a huge reduction in emissions.
To be fair this is not just a problem with United States bureaucrats, but we were the pioneers. Europe decided against the use of catalytic converters in gasoline vehicles until 1997, because they opted for diesel cars instead. At the same time manufactures like Mercedes-Benz, Renault, and Porsche used a knock sensor, which controls spark advance or retardation to keep combustion just below the knock limit. A redesigned long-path intake manifold for more even charging of the cylinder, and extremely high compression ratios of about 10 to 1 compared with ratios of 8.8 to 1 or less common today. That means the vehicles in Europe did not produce as much greenhouse gas emissions as American cars until 1998. That is a big deal.
One of the largest misconceptions out there is that catalytic converters reduce emissions. We need to stop saying that, because they certainly don’t reduce greenhouse emissions. Have we really solved any problems by adding cost to vehicles? Maybe we have even made the problem much worse than before.
Not to mention it’s expensive to have these catalytic converters on diesel engines. A diesel particulate filter gets clogged every ten 10–30,000 miles, and it costs 5–10 thousand dollars to replace. It also lowers fuel milage. A famous example was in 2020 when a Utah business known as Diesel Brothers was fined closed to a million dollars for removing these filter and polluting the air quality of Utah. The EPA took 90% of the fines collected by the courts, and the state of Utah only got to collect 10% of the money.
They did one thing, and that is you don’t have to breath carbon monoxide on the freeway anymore. Would you like to trade in that outdated CO for a brand new shiny cloud of ammonia gas and nitrous oxide? Hurry selling fast.
Is the way of the future really better?
As we are already 20 years into the 21st century, we are beginning to see a new era of the automobile emerging along with new environmental and emissions standards taking place. Although bureaucratic agencies would not have admitted the ultimate goal way back in the 70s, we have now reached an era where talks of banning gasoline cars entirely within the next decade have already taken place, and just as unleaded gasoline cost more than leaded gasoline at the pump for consumers, switching to electric cars has been used an excuse to raise the gas tax in states that will lose revenue. We may very well be witnessing the last generation of Americans that grew up in the age of gasoline cars on the road. Are they really any better for our planet, and is there any point in owning one to save the environment?
One of the largest realization is that a powered battery is only as clean as its source of electricity. This may be a point that many Tesla owners fail to realize. If an electric vehicle plugs into a power source that is generated from coal, is it fair to say that your electric vehicle is clean energy? Burning coal produces nearly twice as many emissions as gasoline engines, regardless of studies that try to explain the lifetime output of an electric vehicle. That is missing the point entirely. Coal plants don’t stop burning when you stop driving, unlike a gasoline powered engine. Let’s be generous and say that the power plants in your area are natural gas. you would only have a 39% reduction of emissions compared with diesel and gasoline. That would more than disappear if we removed the catalytic converter and ethanol mandates that reduces engine efficiency. We also have to look at the overall impact of waste produced by electric vehicles compared with conventional. Gasoline and diesel engines are made of iron, steel, and and aluminum. When they are decommissioned their parts get smashed and they rust and disintegrate back into the earth in less than a century. Modern electric vehicles and the plastic that is used on modern cars stay on our earth indefinitely for thousands of years, cannot be easily recycled, and the rare earth minerals needed to make lithium batteries involve some of the most environmentally destructive mining on the planet. Gasoline and diesel refineries are domestically produced supporting American jobs.
“At the same time, demand for everything from sand to rare and precious metals continues to rise. While supplying only about 1 percent of global electricity, photovoltaics already relies on 40 percent of the global tellurium supply, 15 percent of the silver supply, a large portion of semiconductor quality quartz supply.” — Scientific America
These rare earth minerals are not mined in the United States or Europe. China has controlled 97% of of rare earth mineral market since 2001 when the United States entered the World Trade Organization and PNTR.More importantly, how would phasing out gasoline automobiles affect the American economy overall? We would be saying goodbye to 620,000 jobs for mechanics that service gasoline and diesel engines. Vehicles that are twice the cost, and states doubling the gas tax to make up for loss revenue. Whatever you may call this, this should not be considered a victory for consumers.
The right to repair in the United States is paramount on an automobile producing pollution. Even though electric cars also produce pollution, because electricity has to come from somewhere right? One of the loopholes car manufactures are now taking advantage of, is that electric vehicles do not produce emissions from the exhaust while you are using it, and so car manufactures are no longer forced to provide open access to an OBD port that we can all tap into by law. This is a major shift in automobile history. Even in Right-To-Repair states, it only says that if a car has an OBD port it must be accessible to anyone. It doesn’t say a car has to have an OBD port because electric cars are legally different from conventional automobiles. The On-Board Diagnostics Port is what provides the mechanic with direct diagnostic information in order to measure emissions but also make repairs. The large push for fully electric vehicles removes the requirement of access to vehicle information, since no emissions are produced. Tesla’s battery system uses coolant, and one particular car it was hit by road debris. The nozzle of the coolant system broke. Unlike on a computer water cooling system you can get for $150, the nozzle is not something modular to the system. If the nozzle breaks you broke the coolant system, the coolant system can’t be replaced so you need to replace the entire battery. $16,000 bill from Tesla.
“What are you doing making a $46,000 vehicle you can’t service? A cheap PC water cooling system is more modular than a $46,000 car. I find that ridiculous. How much would it cost to have the nozzle be something that screws in or threads in, when we’re talking about a car that was retailing for $46,000?” — Louis Rossmann
In consequence the auto repairman is becoming more dependent on the dealership for parts and for information, and they have to pay a hefty price and that is eating into the average wage of mechanics and cost to the customers but now you have to factor in the price of information that is no longer shared with everyone for free. Independent repair shops are taking a big hit. Tesla for example can outright tell customers to “screw off” when making your own repairs and even works around dealerships. It also prevents us from using aftermarket parts on everything, even if the aftermarket part is just as reliable or even more reliable than the OEM. Mechanics are banned from doing so and they have to charge the customer more and take a pay cut. Car manufacturers don’t want people to be able to own the rights to the software that runs these cars, and they want to create a subscriber system where you buy the mechanical asset, which depreciates, and you renew the software license and pay for updates. This way the autos capture the secondary market and control asset usage cradle to grave. Modify the car and it won’t work, software invalidated. Welcome to the future.
Think of it this way. With a gasoline engine if it wears down you can make repairs. If a battery fails you have to replace the entire car. Gasoline is open source and non proprietary. Anyone can store gasoline during an emergency and use it. Any engine will take the same fuel. You are not forced to buy gasoline from one station. There is competition. Electric car manufactures are building their cars with proprietary charing connectors, so that you are forced to charge your car only at charging stations owned by the same brand. Some, yes some charging center are free. But free EV charging stations are far less common than those where you pay. Generally speaking, most charging stations will charge by the kilowatt-hour. With pushing towards the transition to electric vehicles, it is also being used as a freedom to raise the gas tax, making it more expensive for working class commuters driving long distances to work who can’t afford a new Tesla. The average demographic of a Tesla owner are American families who make more than $200,000 a year, and 66% of all current Tesla owners don’t have any children.
Now because most of the work that mechanics now do are warranties from the dealership, the mechanic is no longer paid by the hour for the work that they do. We go buy a flat rate system, but that flat rate system can sometimes come back to haunt you when you are faced with a difficult repair. Then you are bogged down, you’re not paid by the hour, you already don’t have any overtime anymore, and you’re telling us that we have to pay for access to information that should be our right? Or maybe you don’t even allow us to obtain that information at all? It also encourages us to rush on your repair to make any real money. That is one of the largest reasons why I am against push to move our vehicles over to an all electric force, while we raise the gas tax as we lose infrastructure spending and ban gasoline engines. I feel this is only going to raise costs for the consumer, and make it impossible for you to repair your vehicle on your own, while providing a questionable benefit to the environment if you factor in emissions from power plants that produce the electricity that you are using up. We know this is happening because Tesla already does this. In fact John Deer tractors have been doing this for many decades and screwing over farmers. This will be very profitable for the automobile manufacturers but this will hurt the daily commuters like me the worker and you the customer.
“I quit being a tech a long time ago due to changes in the industry. When I was hired originally in the 1970’s it was 50/50 of billed labor. By 1983 I was ASE master working at Georgia dealership (no longer 50/50 but great money) making $13.50 an hour, but could turn 100+ hours in a week due to gravy services if I made a deal with service writer to work late a couple of nights a week and handle a few painful warranty jobs no one wanted. Yes some other techs complained about the work I got, but they would not stay late and do the warranty. The world changed around 1990 and flat rate did not keep up with shop rate, warranty times were cut and I was down to mid 40 hour range a week and quit the dealership and went to independent shop and things improved a bit was back to 50 hours a week. Unfortunately the independent shops in the area saw a slow down in work in the mid 90’s so back to dealership and even worse than before. By the time I walked away from the automotive field in 2000 I could not consistently even turn 35 hours a week. I made more in 1984 as a mechanic than I did 15 years later in 1999 and that was in actual money not adjusted, that is how badly today’s blue collar tradesmen are being screwed compared to the 1970's.” — John Martin (Atlanta, GA)
Just ask any independent mechanic or bodyman, and most of them were “making more money 30 years ago” than they are making today and there is a very real reason for that. It’s been the slow removal of consumer rights over the last decades from big insurance and dealerships when it comes to automotive repair, and some autos manufactures even want to bypass the independent dealership. A lot of people are speculating on whether mechanics should unionize to protect their future rights. Electric cars will be the final nail in the coffin that was the independent repair shop and aftermarket world of automobiles. Should the largest billionaires really be in control and monopolize the cars we drive? Just like the television and refrigerator repairman, electric vehicles are not being made to be repaired. When they die they will die. In the next two decades we are switching to all electric cars. That’s the way the economy is going in the next decades out. This will naturally eliminate another category of blue collar jobs from the last century and the profession of engine repair will be dead.
When vehicles made the switch over from carburetors to fuel injection heading into the 1980s, part of the new benefit to the big autos manufactures was now complete control over their product. No longer would the process of repair be analog and open source, but the complete process of EFI systems wold be completely proprietary and many forget this.
“They didn’t want to share anything, until the government stepped in and they made them put their connections in place. This was now proprietary information where everybody has to share it today. The reprogramming and refreshing opened up with E-5.” — Bernie Golick
It would be in 2009 when President Obama introduced the infamous Cash For Clunkers, in a supposed effort to reduce emissions on the road. In a convenient event of circumstance, it just so happened that this phased out the last analog cars on the road made before 1996 without proprietary software. Used car lots and dealerships were told they were not allowed to save any parts on the car including the engine. Each clunker was mandated by government to be ran with a brick on the gas pedal without oil in the engine so that the engine would burn out and catch on fire. Any dealership at the time that were caught saving parts would risk losing their business. This hurt the parts market and used vehicle market extremely, by taking perfectly good working vehicles off the road. Many were told not to ask questions and accept the new normal. Whether it was intentional or not, the consequence was that Americans were told buying car parts was illegal, and that you needed to be incentivized to upgrade your vehicle. This was also during the recession where we were bailing out the auto companies that coincided with new emissions rules.
“Why were they trying to take so many cars, that were basically still kind of analog (OBD-1) made before 1996? All of these cars were still relatively simple technologically. Why was there a concerted effort to get those cars off the road?” — Uncle Tony’s Garage
When you look at the charging stations of Tesla vehicles they are completely proprietary. Gasoline could not be proprietary. No one can put a copyright on it. It was the great equalizer that kept the monopolies in check. You have a spout, you pour liquid into a hole and there is your fuel. Nothing proprietary or restrictive about it. Electronics are not regulated in the same manner. It is severely more restrictive to the consumer, and as cars have become more electronically complex they have naturally become more proprietary. If your Tesla runs out of energy on the road and you pass a Ford charging station, you are out of luck, and the industry lobbies our government an estimated half a million dollar each year to keep it this way. All of this is pursued under the guise of “saving the environment”, when that could not be farther from the truth. Again, what does forcefully making any part on a vehicle non repairable by excluding screws and threads have to do with fighting climate change?
I believe it is always important that we take a step back and ask ourselves if we are moving in the right direction? If we have made steps forward or if we are making steps backwards. When it comes to reducing greenhouse emissions and handling climate change, we may have taken one step forward and three giant leaps backwards. The Environmental Protection Agency has now been writing up laws and new regulations for over five decades now. We have had a chance to examine if we are better off today or were we better off before. I believe the answer that can be said is both. On one hand we have made great progress in cleaning up our rivers and controlling waste, but I believe even the EPA and the industry at the time admitted that the catalytic converter was a half hearted solution that was akin to putting a filter on a cigarette. At the end of the day you are still smoking tobacco into your lungs even if it’s through a fiberglass filter. In many ways American automobiles were significantly better off before emissions regulations were forced on the industry. In solving a problem of smog we’ve created another that is far worse for our planet, and has taken essential rights away from the auto consumer as we begin to mandate into law the complete phase out of the gasoline engine.
