Latest Reader Comment (Dec. 5, 2017)

Here is the latest reader Comment, along with my Reply: 

R writes: Not a question but a comment I personally know Oliver Schmidt. He stayed overnight with my family in Coronado back in 2005. This railroad job by the DOJ is the biggest farce in the history of farces especially considering the microscopic fraction of passenger miles emissions that VW and all diesel passenger vehicles combined emit. The whole point of this exerciseis to kill the only competition to electrics. This is the hippie utopian dream never mind the pollution associated with lithium mining and production. Furthermore the biggest emitters of NOx are 18 wheelers which aren’t tested at all.

My reply: It’s tragic. Rather than clean, economically sensible and practical diesels we are to have economically deranged, functionally gimped electric vehicles which are far from being “clean” forced down our throats.

Example: The BMW electric scooter I test rode last week (reviewed here). Almost $15k for a scooter with a maximum range of about 100 miles – best case – that needs hours to recharge to partial capacity. On what planet does this make any kind of sense?

VW’s diesels – some of them capable of 60-plus MPG – threatened this agenda and so they were “targeted for termination” by emissions requirements so severe that the only possible explanation – besides sheer perversity – was to render them impossible to manufacture, so as to eliminate the competition via regulatory fiat.

And this was made possible by general public insouciance and ignorance. The average person no longer cares whether a person or company has caused harm before punishment is administered. The average person has accepted the idea that it is morally acceptable to nail people and companies to the wall over infractions of law – a very Soviet (or insert alternative authoritarian system of your choice) way of assigning guilt.

The ignorance aspect is  equally depressing. The government gets away with making statements such as: “Tier 2 bin III means a reduction of 50 percent in harmful pollution” (this is just for illustration) which sounds impressive but amounts to 50 percent of 1 percent, or some similar fractional, negligible – functionally irrelevant – distinction. The average is innumerate as well as illiterate – so this passes as easily as high fructose corn syrup down the gullet of a Wal Mart fatty.

If you have the opportunity to speak with Schmidt, please convey my sympathy and let him know I will do all in my power to convey the truth of the matter to those still willing to listen.

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