Auto Emissions

Auto Emissions

As long as automobiles have existed, they have spewed dangerous toxins into the air. The content and volume of these emissions have changed over the years. When leaded gasoline was the norm, the blood lead levels of the American population were significantly higher than they are today. Before catalytic converters, smog was an even worse problem, especially in car-heavy cities like Los Angeles. Currently, America's cars contribute to a staggering one-fifth of our nation’s carbon emissions and almost half of global automotive carbon emissions. 

Cry Wolf Quotes

The more efficient new cars won’t save a drop of gas until they’re purchased. If they don’t sell, not only energy conservation, but pollution and safety improvements will be set back.

-
Unidentified GM Spokesman, Chicago Tribune.

If we sell too many big cars, we’ll have to stop building them. Then we’ll have to ram small cars down consumers’ throats and use dealer incentives to get rid of them so that we can build big cars again. The public is going to rebel because these hard-to-get big cars will then sell for full list or higher when the small cars are being given away.

-
Sid Terry, VP of Public Responsibility and Consumer Affairs for Chrysler, Chicago Tribune.

There is no evidence that [leaded gasoline] has introduced a danger in the field of public health…lead is an inevitable element in the surface of the earth, in its vegetation, in its animal life, and that there is no way in which man has ever been able to escape the absorption of lead while living in this planet.

-
Robert Kehoe, a scientist “cultivated by industry as the dominant authority on lead”, Clean air act hearings. Environmental Research.

Absent a significant technological breakthrough. . . the largest car the industry will be selling in any volume at all will probably be smaller, lighter, and less powerful than today’s compact Chevy Nova…

-
E.M. Estes, the president of General Motors. Oil Daily. 1975.

Evidence

Backgrounders & Briefs

The Success of CAFE Standards

How the CAFE standard and its successes.

The Secret History of Lead

This immense article is an intricately detailed history of leaded gasoline, from the industry's early cover-ups to their attempts to defeat EPA regulations.

The Removal of Lead From Gasoline: Historical and Personal Reflections

First-person historical analysis of the leaded gasoline fight.