Polling these days is often a form a spin. Pollsters artfully phrase and sequence questions to elicit the answers the sponsor is paying for. The sponsor then uses the answers to influence the voter attitudes he pretends the poll merely reflects. The sponsor bets that more voters will support his agenda if they believe (however mistakenly) that most of their neighbors do too. It’s the old self-fulfilling prophesy trick.

Especially during the silly season, some organizations spend lots of cash trying to manufacture the appearance that their preferred candidate has already won. Their operative premise is that you can fool most of the people most of the time — or at least hoodwink enough people in swing (purple) states to make a difference at the ballot box.

What prompts this reflection is an article in today’s Greenwire about an opinion survey of swing state voters conducted by Public Policy Polling for the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). The poll allegedly finds that voters in eight swing states prefer by 57% to 32% a presidential candidate who supports EPA regulation of mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants. That candidate, of course, is Barack Obama.

As discussed in previous posts on voter surveys conducted by Public Policy Polling, the trick is to frame the question so that most respondents give the sponsor’s preferred answer. Here’s the question as described in Greenwire:

Without specifying Obama’s or Romney’s position, the telephone survey asked voters: “One candidate for president supports EPA standards to reduce toxic mercury pollution from power plants; the other candidate says these limits would be bad for business and EPA should not reduce mercury pollution. Would you be more likely to vote for a candidate who supports EPA standards to reduce toxic mercury pollution or one who opposes them?”

In essence, do you want more or less “toxic mercury pollution” in the environment? Unless you happen to be a ”toxic mercury polluter,” you are more likely to respond that you are “more likely” to vote for the guy who wants to reduce “toxic mercury pollution.” This framing abstracts from all the scientific, technical, and economic information that a presidential candidate would need to make a rational choice in the public interest. 

By the EPA’s own reckoning, the costs of the mercury reductions required by the agency’s Utility MACT Rule exceed the quantifiable health benefits by a ratio of 1,600 to one or even 19,200 to one. And in the 22 years since Congress tasked the EPA to study the health risks of mercury, the agency has not identified a single child whose learning or other disabilities can be traced to power-plant mercury emissions. 

Include those facts in the question along with the statement that the EPA policy would be ”bad for business,” and the results would undoubtedly be very different from those NRDC is touting to the media.

Earlier this week, Politico published an op-ed by former Sen. Majority Leader George Mitchell (1989-1995) and former EPA Administrator William Reilly (1989-1993) that is as intellectually mushy as it is politically devious. 

In “Calif. Must Again Lead Way on Emission Standards,” Mitchell and Reilly pretend that the California Air Resources Board’s (CARB’s) proposal to establish a 62 mpg fuel economy standard is the moderate middle between automakers who “protest that the proposal is too demanding” and environmentalists who “want something more stringent.” Horsefeathers!

In September 2010, CARB, EPA, and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) issued an Interim Joint Technical Assessment Report where they considered raising the passenger car fuel economy standard from 35.5 mpg in 2016 to 47 mpg, 51 mpg, 56 mpg, or 62 mpg in 2025.

Let’s not forget that the 2016 standard imposed by EPA, CARB, and NHTSA accelerated by four years the standard Congress set in the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act, which was itself 27% more stringent than the previous standard (27.5 mpg). In May 2011, the Auto Alliance, citing a U.S. Energy Information Administration assessment (p. 26), cautioned EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson and Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood that a 62 mpg standard would depress auto sales in 2025 by 14%. Team Obama subsequently settled on a 56 mpg standard. That’s a tad less extreme than the 62 mpg standard championed by CARB, but it’s still over the top.

A remarkable study by the Center for Automotive Research (CAR) – The U.S. Automotive Market and Industry in 2025 (June 2011) — reveals how cockamamie these proposals are. CAR’s estimates of the costs of fuel-saving technologies required to meet fuel economy standards ranging from 47 mpg to 62 mpg come straight out of the June 2011 National Academy of Sciences report, Assessment of Fuel Economy Technologies for Light-Duty Vehicles, the most comprehensive and up-to-date survey of its kind. 

Here are the key findings related to the 62 mpg standard that CARB, Mitchell, and Reilly are pushing:

• Only two technologies, battery electric vehicles (BEVs) and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) are capable of meeting a 62 mpg standard.
• BEV and PHEV technology would add $9,790 to the retail price of a new car in 2025 (compared to the price of a new car in 2009).
• Expected new safety regulations will add another $1,500 to new-car retail price in 2025.
• The total retail price increase of $11,290 due to fuel economy and safety regulations would exceed five-year fuel savings by $8,026 if gasoline prices average $3.50/gallon over the next 15 years and $4,551 if gasoline prices average $6.00/gallon.
• Consumer spending on new motor vehicles in 2025 would fall from $713 billion in the baseline case to $669 billion if gasoline prices average $6.00/gallon and $626 billion if gasoline prices average $3.50/gallon.
• Light motor vehicle sales in 2025 would fall from 17.9 million units in the baseline case to 14.5 million if gasoline prices average $6.00/gallon and 12.5 million if gasoline prices average $3.50/gallon.
• Light motor vehicle production in 2025 would fall from 10.8 million units in the baseline case to 8.7 million if gasoline prices average $6.00/gallon and 7.5 million if gasoline prices average $3.50/gallon.
• Automotive employment in 2025 would fall from 877,075 in the baseline case to 711,538 if gasoline prices average $6.00/gallon and 612,257 if gasoline prices average $3.50/gallon — a loss of 264,500 jobs.

CAR sums up the depressing chain of consequences of a 62 mpg standard combined with a $1,500 cost increase associated with new safety standards:

The cost to the consumer of purchasing a motor vehicle would rise by nearly 40 percent and the net cost by 27.7 percent over five years. As a result, U.S. sales of vehicles would fall by 5.4 million units and U.S. vehicle production by 3.3 million units. Motor vehicle and parts manufacturing employment would fall by 264,500, causing a total employment loss for the U.S. economy of 1.69 million. This loss would happen by 2025 but would start to cumulate with the increase in standards in 2017. Requirements to downsize vehicles [if fuel-economy targets could not be met via technology advances alone] would only increase these loss estimates, as the consumer value of vehicles would be seriously reduced.

Even omitting the $1,500 expense for new safety features, even the least stringent (47 mpg) standard CARB, EPA, and NHTSA were considering is a net money-loser for consumers if gasoline prices average $3.50/gallon. Only if gasoline prices average $6.00/gallon is the 47 mpg standard a net money saver. All of the more stringent standards are net money losers even with $6.00/gallon gasoline.

In the chart below, red numbers in parentheses are ‘negative savings,’ i.e. net losses. Numbers in the left-most column correspond to the four fuel-economy standards (47 mpg, 51 mpg, 56 mpg, and 62 mpg) proposed in CARB/EPA/NHTSA’s Interim Joint Technical Assessment Report. The numbers have been adjusted to reflect ”real world“ fuel economy, which is always lower than the official mpg ratings as determined by EPA laboratory tests.

A 62 mpg standard (49.6 mpg in “real world” fuel economy) imposes a $6,525 net loss on consumers over five years. The 56 mpg standard (44.8 mpg in “real world” fuel economy) imposes a $2,858 net loss.

As you’d expect, green groups like the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT) claim the CAR study is rife with error. Earlier this month, CAR responded to the ICCT critique, which broadly overlaps with NRDC’s. I find CAR’s rebuttal persuasive. I won’t try to summarize this highly technical debate but do want to mention one point.

ICCT/NRDC argue that CAR overstates vehicle costs by assuming automakers would have to produce large numbers of BEVs and PHEVs to meet the 56 mpg and 62 mpg standards. It would be cheaper, they contend, to ramp up production of hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs). But, CAR responds, to meet a 56 mpg standard, almost 80% of all cars sold in 2025 would have to be HEVs, whereas under current policies HEVs are projected to capture only about 10% of the market in 2025. Moreover, HEVs would have to shed about 15% of their current mass. Other things being equal, the less mass a car has to absorb collision forces, the less protection it offers to motorists in crashes. “Small is beautiful” environmentalists may deny it, but when it comes to safety, size matters.

If I may translate, ICCT/NRDC are saying don’t worry, be happy, because a 56 mpg standard would function as a de-facto hybridization, weight-reduction mandate. But if so, the standard would create an automobile market that departs dramatically from revealed consumer preference (what people are actually buying). Making cars to please government planners rather than to satisfy consumers is no way to build a healthy auto industry. It’s a recipe for declining sales, profits, and employment. 

CARB, EPA, and NHTSA, aided and abetted by Mitchell, Reilly, ICCT, NRDC, and their ilk, are taking an enormous gamble with other people’s assets, livelihoods, and economic future. No doubt it’s loads of fun for them. But if we were living under a constitution of liberty, that sort of mischief would not be allowed.

President Barack Obama this week nominated John Bryson to be Secretary of Commerce.  Senator James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.) immediately announced that he would try to defeat Bryson’s confirmation by the Senate. It’s easy to see why Inhofe didn’t have to spend much time weighing Bryson’s qualifications.  Bryson is a model crony capitalist, lifelong professional environmentalist, and leading promoter of cap-and-trade legislation to raise energy prices.

Here is what Bryson said at a symposium at the University of California, Berkeley, in 2009: “Greenhouse gas legislation – either with a tax or with a cap and trade, which is a more complicated way of getting at it, but it has the advantage politically of sort of hiding the fact that you have a tax, but at the same – you know that’s what you’re trying to do, trying to raise price of carbon….”  He went on to say that the Waxman-Markey and other cap-and-trade bills in Congress would not raise energy prices enough to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by the required amount, so that he also favored federal regulations, such as renewable requirements for electric utilities, on top of cap-and-trade.  Later, Bryson referred to Waxman-Markey as a “moderate but acceptable bill.”

As a new graduate of Yale Law School in 1970, Bryson was one of the founders of the Natural Resources Defense Council and served as legal counsel in the group’s early years.  From 1976 to 1979, he was chairman of the California State Water Resources Control Board.  And from 1979 to 1982, he was chairman of the California Public Utilities Commission.  He was appointed to both positions by then-Governor Jerry Brown.  After practicing law, he then spent 18 years at Edison International, the parent company of Southern California Edison.  He retired as chairman and CEO in 2008.  In recent years, Bryson has served as an official adviser on energy and environmental issues to the Secretary General of the United Nations.