Last drink at the CAFE

In all the discussion about weaning the United States off of foreign oil -- and there are so many good reasons to do that -- it has become clear that our motor vehicles have got to be part of the solution. There's no way to avoid it -- they represent a very large chunk or our fossil-fuel consumption. So people are talking about jacking up CAFE standards, which in the absence of better ideas seems like a pretty reasonable approach. But what nobody talks about at all is scrapping CAFE and coming up with a new way to measure and regulate fuel efficiency.

So let's talk about it. I think it's time to drive a stake through the heart of this dinosaur of a regulatory system. What most people don't know, don't understand, or don't care about is that CAFE is a big shell game. There are so many ways to fudge the rules, and the mileage-based numbers are so misleading, that I think it's time to start over with a new system. We need a fuel-economy system that focuses on gasoline used, rather than miles driven.

Die-hard free-marketers ought to LOVE this idea -- it's absolutely loyal to the philosophy that better information flow makes for a more efficient market. My suggestion, I believe, unpacks the hidden deception of the current CAFE standards.

Over several future posts, I'll outline some of my ideas, in the hope that someone with a LOT more readers than I have will see these ideas and pass them along (with attribution, hopefully).