DEATH AT THE CAFE: A THRILLER

The best proof of the sham-environmentalist's deception are the cases when their campaigns, waged behind a smoke screen of highfalutin' rhetoric, despoil the environment, injure public health and take human lives.

The outstanding example of this is the case of nuclear power, where each gigawatt of capacity prevented from going on line results in a median of 72 premature deaths per year by fossil-fired power that fails to get replaced.

The result of these noble efforts was CAFE, the Corporate Average Fuel Efficiency Act, which forces car manufacturers to increase their average of gas mileage. With automobile experts like Lord Kennedy of Chappaquiddick, Congress in 1975 determined the plan of this average gas mileage for each year through 1985, the precise level lo be determined for 1986 and each succeeding year by the Dpt. of Transportation. This was done because consumers like you are far too stupid to make their own decisions by shopping in a free market; they have to be saved from themselves by intellectual giants like Dole, Scranton, Dellums, and Gephardt. For 1985 the crystal balls of these prodigies showed the number 27.5 miles per gallon as the divinely chosen average, but in fact this standard has not been reached to this day, although it was proposed by the DOT for 1989.

But once a car's engine has been designed for maximum efficiency, and Detroit's legalistic massage of prices has done its work to meet the sales-weighted average by manipulation, the overriding factor for gas mileage is the weight of the car, to which fuel consumption is directly proportional (aerodynamic and tire resis-tance are of lesser importance, though not insignificant). So since 1975 engineers struggled with every ounce (yes, they even put in fewer and smaller ashtrays) to serve not the consumer, but the Washington planning boards.