You may be aware of the recent and rather innovative green initiative the Obama administration put forward this summer: the Car Allowance Rebate System (cars), colloquially known as the Cash for Clunkers program, in which owners of old, gas guzzling cars bring their clunkers in and get a rebate on a brand new and more efficient model. The program was meant to run from July 1st through November of this year, 2009, but ran out of funding due to its popularity. Last week, $2 billion of federal incentives were added to the previously $1 billion program.
While the program seems Utopian, there are some inevitable critics of the program, including car dealers, owners and non-owners. Car dealers complain of losing money on so many new cars sold at lower prices and have attempted to withhold new cars from buyers due to some clunker applications being rejected. However, the U.S. Department of Transportation has announced that car dealers are not allowed to ask buyers sign contingency agreements. Clunker owners aren’t always pleased either because the system only gives them a rebate toward a new car, which many clunker owners can’t afford. The system has actually been so effective that potential clunker owners, those looking in the $3000 category, now have fewer options and lower income families can’t afford to buy cars! As a wise woman often said to me, “there’s no silver bullet when it comes to environmentalism.”
Still, some Americans are happy that the program was reinstated. “I’m happy it was extened because it takes fuel-inefficient cars off the road and it helps America’s industries. What’s better than that?” Says Lucas Belury (pictured above), owner of a 1987 Nissan Maxima. He hopes to take advantage of this second chance to use the program.