Sunday, October 28, 2007
Forcing businesses to denounce themselves
Europe is proposing to to hijack the advertising of automobile manufacturers:
The European Parliament proposed last Wednesday that car advertisements in the European Union carry tobacco-style labels, warning of the environmental impact they cause. Under the plan, 20 percent of the space or time of any auto ad would have to be set aside for information on a car's fuel consumption and carbon dioxide emissions, cited as a contributor to global climate change.
The next time you worry that the United States Congress is full of morons, console yourself with the knowledge that the Europeans have it much worse.
The analogy to the regulation of tobacco advertising is imperfect to the point of being asinine. The purpose of the tobacco warnings is, in principle, to ensure that consumers do not assume risks that they are not intending to assume. Sure, the advocates of those rules obviously hope they lead to less smoking, but the structure of the warnings and the regulation -- at least in the United States -- is to make sure that the advertising's appealing imagery does not blind consumers of the product to its dangers.
The automobile case, at least as it relates to the impact of carbon dioxide, is entirely different. No individual consumer assumes a risk in connection with the carbon dioxide emitted from his automobile. The European Parliament is not interested in protecting the target of the advertisement -- the consumer -- from assuming a risk unknown to him. Its purpose is to hijack the advertising of automobile manufacturers to make public service announcements. But why does it want to hijack automobile advertising?
While it is often difficult to divine the intent of legislatures, certain of the European Parliament's objectives are self-evident. Proponents of these regulations obviously want to make it impossible for automobile manufacturers to express a different opinion about the impact of carbon dioxide on the global climate than that dictated by the government. If BMW and Toyota are required to make certain statements in every advertisement they publish, then they cannot credibly express a different opinion in other settings. Also, supporters of the law almost certainly hope that statements about the impact of automobiles on the climate will be more credible coming from an automobile manufacturer than a bureaucrat. After all, a statement against theoretical self-interest has public relations value even if it is obvious to everybody that it was compelled. Why else do jihadis try to torture Western hostages into taping confessions for propaganda purposes?
Finally, European regulators do not want to attack the automobile industry directly. Politicians the world over understand that automobiles are popular. It is politically dangerous, even in Europe, to argue against the car culture. This law, were it adopted, would allow European politicians to appease environmentalists without themselves criticizing voters who drive cars. They would have the makers of cars denounce their own products instead.
This, then, is the danger of the law. If it is useful and acceptable to force automobile manufacturers to give over a piece of every ad to inveigh against carbon dioxide, why not require airlines to discuss the risk of intercontinental disease transmission, food processors to call for strict enforcement of our borders, Microsoft to promote sports and fresh air as healthier entertainment than surfing the Web, retailers to campaign against credit card debt, pharmaceutical manufacturers to speak out against the enforcement of patents in poor countries, and aircraft manufacturers to campaign against private jets?
Oh, wait, that last idea would never get any support from Al Gore...
11 Comments:
By 
, at
Sun Oct 28, 11:19:00 PM:
A lot of Europeans don't like crazy environmentalists. When I lived abroad someone told me that the Greens would only be happy when everyone were again riding a horse.
It amused me to think back on this later when I read that in the nineteenth century some people feared that in the future horses manure would bury the streets.
That never happened. Funny how there's always another threat that comes along though...
By , at
Mon Oct 29, 12:22:00 AM:
WARNING. THE EUROWEENIE UNION HAS BEEN DISCOVERED TO CONSIST OF SILLY REDICLOUS AND IDIOTIC FOOLS MAKING STUPID WARNINGS BASED ON JUNK SCIENCE AND STUPDIDY
By , at
Mon Oct 29, 05:07:00 AM:
It would be funny if the car manufacturers used the advertising time to compare the CO2 output of the car with the CO2 generated by the travel of the average member of the european parliament .
Unfortunately, that would be rocking the boat, so we would never see anything like that.
By , at
Mon Oct 29, 09:12:00 AM:
The Sierra Club, and others, et. al., would embrace this eagerly.
The same thing will soon appear in US car ads.
You can depend on it.
-David
By 
SR, at
Mon Oct 29, 09:14:00 AM:
Time to get a clever ad agency.
" A Mercedes Benz emits X kg of CO2 when driven at 100kph. Which is more than walking,riding a bicycle,or riding a horse, but less than the amount emitted by lighting the Parliament building in Brussels, or by flying in a private jet to Corfu."
By Georg Felis, at
Mon Oct 29, 09:48:00 AM:
Oh, I think I can top that. (show picture of sports car zooming along the highway) “A Mercedes Benz X driven at 100kph generates approximately Y kilograms of CO2 per hour, which is blamed for causing global warming. It also burns fossil fuel in a blistering hot Z degrees 8 cylinder double overhead cam 32 valve engine producing approximately C calories of heat which it dumps into the environment. It also produces one other kind of heat.” (car pulls to the side of the road, driver dives out the door into the water, *huge* cloud of steam billows up. Passing by blonde chick looks over at the damp guy in the water, helps pull him out, show car zooming off with two people in it now)
“Mercedes. We’re hot.”
By , at
Mon Oct 29, 10:25:00 AM:
And just how many trees were in the area where many of these enviromentalists wackos have their HQs and just think of how many trees were cut down to print all those copies of AL GORES malarkey book and film i mean where SAN FRANCISCO now sits was a wilderness area
By , at
Mon Oct 29, 09:36:00 PM:
I want a flex-fuel car that will burn junk mail.
By , at
Tue Oct 30, 12:47:00 AM:
By , at
Wed Oct 31, 10:55:00 AM:
I'm buying me a Clydesdale now !! Pure craziness !
By , at
Sun Nov 04, 10:57:00 PM:
back a few years ago some enviromentalists warned they were going to go around and tiecket peoples SUVs accusing them of constibuting to global warming and wrecking the planet so imagine some eco-wacko on his bicycle comes peddling up to some big muscular guys SUV he with his granola bar in his mouth the eco-wacko sticks a ticket under the windsheild wipper the big guy comes out of his home the next thing you see is the eco-wacko running around with his bicycle wrapped around his neck his ticket book in his mouth and his granola bar up his nose
