In a segment for NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday, Liane Hansen interviews Professor Michael Gerrard, of Columbia Law School’s Center for Climate Change Law, about the environmental impacts of the popular Cash for Clunkers program.
You can read the interview, and listen to the audio here.
“The program has been wonderful for the economy, but it’s been only a middling success for greenhouse gas emissions,” Michael Gerrard, director of Columbia Law School’s new Center for Climate Change Law tells Weekend Edition host Liane Hansen.
To start, Gerrard says, “there was a provision in the law that automobiles over 25 years old could not be traded in. And that made no sense from an environmental standpoint. It was put there to help the dealers in used auto parts, but it really didn’t help the environment at all.”
Additionally, “the minimum required difference in the mileage for the old vehicles that were traded in and the new vehicles that were bought was just 4 miles per gallon — which is not much of a difference at all.”
To make a bigger impact, the government could have required a greater mileage differential, Gerrard says. “You could have had a minimum of 15 mpg differential, which would have made a big difference.”
People did buy cars with better average gas mileage, Gerrard says, “but it is still not a cost-effective way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”
“There are some calculations that it cost somewhere between $200 and $400 per ton of carbon dioxide reduced, depending on what assumptions are used,” he says. “That’s way above the market price of carbon and way above many, many other methods of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.”