Should the government mandate that all cars be fueled by alternative fuels?
I am debating, I just need some evidence that argues this resolution Resolved: That, by 2040, the federal government should mandate that all new passenger vehicles and light trucks sold in the United States by powered by alternative fuels.
Nothing about energy. Just why a mandate is bad. I was thinking something regarding the halt of ingenuity and innovation. Or socialism even.
By the way, I need NEED sources.
Okay, debate topics are fun. This is an interesting bent. Okay, here is how you should present your argument:
- Inflexible government mandates increase the likelihood of market manipulation through "poor planing" or "accidents" or "acts of nature" excuses by corporations.
- Market forces are more than sufficient to motivate consumers. The occurance of peak oil and resulting increase in gas prices over time will make conventional car driving obsolete. The desire for new, more cost-effective technologies for consumers will drive innovation, making a mandate meaningless. Government may help this process by funding research into new technologies.
- Organizing tax structures (breaks for alt fuel purchases and higher taxes on non-alt fuels) will do more to protect consumers and the environment than making combustion vehicle manufacturing illegal.
- This will harm US manufacturing by compelling combustion engine consumers to buy from other countries and ship the vehicles to the US.
If you are feeling ballsy, you should go for:
- The government lacks an enumerated Constitutional authority to mandate that a manufacturer make this versus that, unless the product crosses the State line, as enumerated in the Commerce Clause. So acceptance of such a mandate undermines the legal heritage of our nation. (This argument allowed conservatives to initially strike down much of FDR’s New Deal until threats of Supreme Court-loading made justices change their opinions.)
For a high school debate, that should be several very compelling arguments. References below.
I wouldn’t go as far as to say socialism. but you did pick a hard end to debate.
One point you might make is that unless they plan on paying everyone to get new cars, or retrofit current ones, that its impractical because not everyone can afford to switch to a fuel efficient car.
If they did mandate and did decide to actually finance it, It would put the government into an even bigger deficit, which is what we DON’T want.
Sometimes the alternative fuels are just as bad as the gasoline, if were not sending co2 into the air, we’re doing something else to hurt the planet by harvesting these fuels.
Sorry I don’t have any sources, but I hope my ideas at least give you something to work from!
-Joshy
no sources for you but i just wanted to agree with Joshy, alternative fuels are not always best only because of the way they are harvested, by clear cutting the rain forests! we need the trees to cleanse the air! corn is NOT efficient, we need to grow sugar beets here in america by converting all the unused parking lots and open fields!
your kidding right the government is being bribed by the oil money that is why there are not very many alternate fuel vehicles are being sold and the fact that so many jobs rely on the oil industry is why they would never mandate that all cars must be alternative
Take off the tin foil hats. The oil companies don’t care because they will still be in the process. Look, biodiesel is at most 20% biodiesel and 80% regular, that is not enough to cause fits with oil companies. Then, how will the biofuels get to market, through the oil companies distribution system.
Ethanol is the same, E85 is NOT 85% ethanol, the E85 means that it cannot contain more than 85% nor less than 70% ethanol.
You want electric cars, who owns the fuel that makes electricity? Mining companies. Even wind a solar depend on mining companies to get the raw materials. SO, no no conspiracy here.
Look at everything the government mandates and how that’s turned out. They mandated CAFE standards a long time ago. When the car lots filled up with cars no one wanted, yep, the government didn’t change the CAFE value, they exempted trucks from the calculation, so the car companies invented the SUV because that’s what the people wanted.
Here are some past mandates, research the Soviet style mandates put out as the "five year plan". This is what cause the soviets to fail, the mandates of the 5 year plans set the USSR backward in time.
If everyone used alternative fuels, they wouldn’t be alternative anymore. We’d have the same problems, just with something other than gasoline.
In reality, there are only 4 fuels that can be produced in enough volume to power America’s fleet of cars.
Gasoline, which we all know about, and its advantages and disadvantages. In the U.S., we’re using 390 million gallons per day.
Diesel, which comes from the exact same source. Diesel engines are more efficient than gasoline engines, and can run on vegetable oil.
Electricity–and we’d need a lot more generation plants if everyone went to electric cars but we can do that. The big disadvantage to electric cars is range (usually less than 80 miles per charge), though there may be a technological solution. Also, from a carbon perspective–producing and distributing electricity at 30% thermal efficiency, then storing it in an 85% efficient battery, then running it through a 90% efficient electric motor–we might be better off just using gasoline.
Fourth is natural gas. We can produce a lot more of that than we are currently producing, though perhaps not enough for the entire fleet. The biggest advantage to natural gas vehicles is it can run in a gasoline engine with very little modification, and it burns cleaner. A vehicle set up to run on natural gas will also run on Hydrogen.
The alternative fuels ethanol and vegetable oil are both derived from plant material (mostly corn) and are therefore renewable, but there is not enough land in the U.S., nor water for irrigation, to grow 390 million gallons per day. For ethanol, the other problem is the energy for distillation. If we use electricity for distillation, ethanol may be less efficient.
In the long run, we can’t replace gas/diesel with a single fuel. At best we can supplement with alternative fuels, at best we’ll replace part of our gasoline with other fuels. I suppose this gets into the meat of your question: if we mandate that all new vehicles have to use a fuel that does not exist, no one will buy them.