The Obama Economy Comes in with a “Clunk” - Its a New Era
clunk·er (cl
ng
k
r)
The Clunker Stimulus and Emerging Markets
Could the Obama administration be seen as a major turning point in environmental and economic history because of something called the “Cash for Clunkers” Program?
“In virtually no time, the clunker program has become a national pastime. It has captured the public’s imagination in a way that no other federal stimulus has. Everyone is talking about it. And I truly believe that consumer spirits have been buoyed by the prospect of going out and buying a new car — even with federal assistance, and even under the duress of federal mileage standards. After a very dreary year or two, people might just have fun trading in their clunkers and buying something new,”
Now that everyone seems happy with Obama’s Clunker Program, it’s time to look at maximizing the benefits. A very clear and obvious question has to do with using tax payer money as a loss leader to finance the program. Certainly the program was meant to kick start a faltering auto industry, and begin to replace older inefficient and environmentally suspect products, but if we take this opportunity we could kick start emerging markets as well. By privatizing the clunker programs we could potentially open a number of new cradle to cradle markets to incentivize the reuse and recycling of materials.
Granted this model wouldn’t replace the regime of “design obsolescence,” but it would replace basing design obsolescence on the production of inferior materials, manufacturing processes, and technology, with superior materials, manufacturing processes, and technology. This is exactly what we accomplished in the computer industry these past thirty years.
Yesterday I heard on NPR how “Clunkers” are being “killed” and then recycled. As it turns out only the ferous metals are being recycled back into production, everything else is sent to land fills - not a very sustaining prospect for an ecologically minded Administration.
In my mind, it no longer makes sense for governments to clean up behind dirty and wasteful industries to maintain the balance of a sustainable earth. We have lived through the abundance of managing scare resources to having few remaining resources, and now we must manage through a determination of risk. The public burden of excess pollution and waste has become too large to be sustainable. The costs of clean-up projects and waste storage facilities are too taxing on the public wallet, and for those who would like to see lower taxes and a smaller government, they may find shrinking what we put into our land fills as one way to go.
Beside expanding the salvage market a Clunkers market could lead to the creation of a whole new manufacturing model that incentivizes the design of materials and processes for their life-cycle use and reuse, while limiting waste. In so doing auto manufacturers have the opportunity to expand the resell and reuse of materials from used vehicles. Who knows, some one may even develop a business plan to mine our land fills for used raw materials.
