That's an excellent example of bad governance though. The government instead should have priced in the externalities of gasoline directly into the gas and then

That's an excellent example of bad governance though. The government instead should have priced in the externalities of gasoline directly into the gas and then allowed consumers to decide if they wanted to spend money on better gas mileage. Customers would give a significant amount of demand for better gas mileage themselves if gas was $7/gallon. The reason the current approach is a failure is that everyone who doesn't care about efficiency can skirt the whole mandate by buying a truck/suv that gets a whopping 15mpg in town[1]. The popularity of trucks in the US speaks to how bone-headed the approach of mandating efficiency in cars is. The even worse part about not correctly taxing the actual externality is that people think they are doing good things for the environment by buying new high gas mileage cars and then unwinding that whole thing with a cheap flight to Paris or by constantly having things shipped across the country for them. >To change the incentives for individuals so markets optimize for global good. This is not a hard concept. Yep, not a hard concept but the implementation is where everything went completely to shit. 1. https://fueleconomy.gov/feg/bymodel/2017_Ram_1500_Pickup.shtml https://fueleconomy.gov/feg/bymodel/2017_Ram_1500_Pickup.sht...