Cash for Clunkers
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The Recovery Act: the most important energy bill in American history
If the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) had been an energy bill, it would arguably have been the single-most important piece of clean energy legislation in our nation’s history. It drove unprecedented new investments — both public and private — into modernizing America’s clean energy infrastructure. And its clean energy provisions alone have already […]
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Obama seizes the energy opportunity
During President-Elect Barack Obama’s transition, the Center for American Progress proposed a 10-point clean-energy agenda for the president and Congress that would speed the economic transformation to a clean energy economy. A review of these items today finds that all were adopted or are working their way through the process. This is a startling achievement […]
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Cash for Clunkers brought us … more clunkers!
So how did Cash for Clunkers work out from an environmental standpoint? You don’t want to know. The $3 billion federal program was kinda sorta supposed to send inefficient, high-polluting, belchy vehicles to an early grave. Instead it put a lot of new large, inefficient vehicles on the road, according to an AP investigation of […]
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Cash-for-Clunkers to end Monday night, for real this time
Photo: billadayThe “Cash for Clunkers” program has been so successful that it will have to be wrapped up earlier than expected, the Obama administration announced on Thursday. Folks looking to turn in their fuel-hogging old cars will need to get their deals finalized by this Monday, Aug. 24, at 8 p.m. EST in order to […]
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Like Cash for Clunkers? You’ll love feebates!
Photo: ThreatedThoughtsIt’s now fairly widely understood that Cash for Clunkers has worked great as a stimulus program but is negligible as an emissions-reduction program. That’s fine — it did what it was supposed to do. Now that we know how well people respond to cash incentives, though, it’s time to do some deeper thinking about […]
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Surprisingly popular Cash for Clunkers program raises hopes–and questions
This post was written by ProPublica’s Marcus Stern and Jake Bernstein. To supporters, the “cash for clunkers” program miraculously jolted the moribund car market back to life, engendering hopes that it might help revive the broader U.S. economy. Skeptics saw it differently: The automotive industry had hijacked an environmental bill and turned it into a […]
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Cash for … other things!
So Congress approved and President Obama signed an extension of the hugely popular (and not-really-so-green) cash-for-clunkers program. Woohoo! We can think of some better “Cash for …” programs the government should be funding … Cash for computers—Think of the power savings. Not to mention the peace of a Twitter-free life. Cash for cookies—Your sweet tooth […]
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Cash for Clunkers pays for itself in oil savings while generating free CO2 reductions
Seth Borenstein, the AP science writer I admire greatly, has a long piece explaining that Cash for Clunkers is a very cost-ineffective way to save CO2. Duh*. “As a means of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, this “cash for clunkers” deal is probably among the least cost-effective uses of federal dollars one could imagine,” as I […]
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Cash-for-Clunkers returns from the dead … until Labor Day
The Senate celebrated the imminent arrival of the annual August recess by confirming Sonia Sotomayor‘s Supreme Court nomination and ponying up an additional $2 billion for the highly successful (though dubiously green) cash-for-clunkers program. The vote was 60 to 37, with Democrats almost unanimously supporting the extension and Republicans nearly united in opposition. President Obama […]
