[mikewarot]

>What a dumb requirement. It's like the cash-for-clunkers program requiring the engines to be destroyed.

The whole point of the "cash-for-clunkers" program was to remove as many older, more polluting, and unsafe, cars from the market as possible, to force an upgrade of the fleet, and simultaneously provide incentives to buy new cars.

It wasn't dumb in the larger scheme, but yes... on the individual level, it made it almost impossible to get an affordable good used car for a few years.

The locomotive is now only good for scrap metal, if the engine is similarly disabled.

[happyopossum]

> It wasn't dumb in the larger scheme,

It was an insanely regressive cash redistribution program that punished poor people for many years after it was over. You can call that 'not dumb' but I won't.

[Zak]

I wonder how many years a car eligible for that program would need to be driven to equal the environmental impact of building a new car and driving it for the same number of years.

I lack the expertise to offer a useful estimate, but I'm guessing that number is not small.

[buildsjets]

That’s totally beside the point. Breathing smog is disgusting, regardless of the economic balance. It removed an incredible number of local point-source polluters from high population density areas. Cash 4 Clunkers was so successful that Seattle completed eliminated emissions testing, because not enough crapboxes were failing the test after they weeded out the vast majority of the clunkers.

[bluGill]

Most clunkers were not eliminated. It only covered if you bougt a more fuel efficien vehicle so small cars didn't get covered and people who couldn't afford new cars were not covered.

emmisions were already improving and tests rarely found anything so this was used as an excuse to eliminate waste

[Zak]

I did not say anything about economics; I wrote only about environmental impact.

It's hard to compare different kinds of environmental impact, but building a new car involves several, often with effects far away from the place where the car is used.