Resources:
Vehicle Emissions Fact Sheet ( PDF )
Free to download, print & distribute.

From the Arizona Automobile Hobbyist Council (“United We Drive, Divided We Park”)

  1. Scrappage laws (aka “clunker bills”) and pollution taxes discriminate against a car simply based on it’s age. Maintenance is the key to a clean-burning car, not its age.
  2. Those people who drive cars worth only $700 usually have no choice because of their economic status. Adding a pollution tax simply makes for a greater hardship.
  3. Scrappage laws and pollution taxes tend to be promoted by — and/or funded by — the petroleum industry, which is looking for ways to delay expensive improvements to its own refineries.
  4. The “cash for clunkers” programs are a farce because they suggest that oil companies are doing “good will” by cleaning up the air. They’re not. (See #3)
  5. Offering an individual $500-$700 for his older car is no guarantee that he will go out and buy a cleaner-burning car because A) He most likely doesn’t have the extra money to pay for it and B) low interest loans, while a nice gesture, still require some income that the owner just doesn’t have. A smarter solution? Pay them to bring their current car in line with emissions standards.
  6. Scrappage laws are a possible solution when a stringent emissions plan is absent. Arizona taxpayers are absorbing the high cost of the I/M-240 and the Smog Dogs to catch polluters. If these programs are in force and working properly, why should we need a plan to take the high polluting cars off the road?
  7. Scrappage laws hurt the used-car parts dealers and scrap yards who lose an opportunity to recycle automotive parts.
  8. Scrappage laws make vast, unproven assumptions about the reduction in mobile pollutants. We have no data to show how much pollution a scrappage program could remove from the air.
  9. Scrappage laws and pollution taxes often are implemented as a scapegoat to help focus attention away from tackling problems created by larger sources of pollution — commercial transport and industry — and from the need to make the large but necessary investment into mass transit.
  10. Scrappage laws can significantly impact the survival of the automotive heritage of this country — and will accomplish little but hurt the working poor and give powerful industry an easy break from meeting their own responsibilities.