December 3, 2007

Since about 1970, developed countries have worked to control automobile emissions amid growing concerns about unhealthy air contributing to increasing incidence of ailments such as respiratory and cardiovascular disease and high blood pressure. Targets of these policies have included carbon monoxide (CO), hydrocarbons (HCs),nitrogen oxides (NOx), and lead. Because of concerns about global warming, carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions from automobiles, which account for roughly 32 percent of total U.S. emissions, have become an important target for new policies to control air pollution from vehicles.

Senior Fellows Winston Harrington and Virginia McConnell recently completed an edited volume titled Controlling Automobile Air Pollution (Ashgate Publishers, 2007). Harrington and McConnell reviewed over 150 articles to select the 26 that comprise the book. Chapter by chapter, the articles outline the most pressing economic issues in automobile pollution, including trends in vehicle use, the complex nature of regulation, and the externalities of driving.

• Part II, Conventional Pollutants, examines the hidden costs and implications associated with regulation policies designed to reduce automobile pollution.
• Part III, Greenhouse Gas Emissions, provides a review of research on the effectiveness of improving Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards along with other renewable fuel and efficiency incentives.
• Part IV, Multiple Externalities, contains several essays that use a comprehensive framework to look at the full range of external costs from vehicle use, including pollution, congestion, and accidents.

This book is one of 25 in The International Library of Environmental Economics and Policy, a series aggregating the most significant articles from the economics literature on leading environmental topics.

As concern about global warming grows, there are likely to be significant changes in vehicle technology and fuels in the coming years. As this occurs, many of the issues raised by the studies in this book will continue to be important. However, a whole new set of questions will also emerge. In the development of new vehicles and fuels, society will have to determine what the best policies are for encouraging innovation, the role of government in addressing market failures and building infrastructure, and how the landscape of vehicle pollution will change as developing countries modernize. These and other challenges should be enough to keep motor vehicle pollution a front-burner issue for many years to come.