“The mighty inland sea lies stricken now, caught in the grip of some evil chemistry as its waters dry to salt and blow away as noxious dust to strike the people with illness and death.” Years ago that’s how a National Geographic Magazine article described an environmental disaster greater perhaps than any the earth has ever seen. Since then the Soviet Union’s Aral Sea has nearly vanished, robbed of its life-giving inflows by the decisions of expert planners who were determined to make the Soviet Union self-sufficient in cotton production.

With the world fast moving from international recession toward economic depression the CEOs of Chrysler, Ford and General Motors have trekked to Capital Hill rattling their tin “bail out” cups, as they advance their own Aral Sea Agendas. But they and their federal government counterparts don’t seem to have a clue as to how to really cure the nation’s economic problems.

In what was then the Soviet Union, salt-encrusted wasteland replaced the once mighty Aral Sea. The little water that remains in the sea is salt-saturated. A once thriving fishing industry is dead. Huge clouds of salty dust rise from the dry portions of the seabed and fall to earth miles away contaminating once productive farm lands.
 
Rusting ship hulks mark the places where life sustaining water once lapped up on beautiful lake shores. The populace suffers many new ailments related to poor nutrition and environmental degradation. No one has ever seen an environmental problem, no a catastrophe, of this magnitude.
 
“White Gold” the Soviet Union’s planners called their newly created cotton crops, and to water them diverted complete rivers. In 1960 the Aral Sea covered 26,000 square miles. Now it has shrunk to less than ten percent of that having lost surface area nearly twice the size of the state of Maryland, and having lost water mass equivalent to draining both Lakes Erie and Ontario.

The Aral Sea Agenda was apparently a good plan well executed, and of noble intent, but it culminated in a disaster. Today it is a stark reminder to the entire world that a government’s well intentioned efforts can go horribly wrong. Today’s planners in  Congress and the new Administration should take heed that in their zeal to fix the nations’ economic problems they do not launch us too far down the path of an Aral Sea Agenda, because there are many splendid opportunities.

During the Administration of President Bush “The Elder,” I was the Administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and had to constantly fend off those who would use the agency to foist Aral Sea Agendas on the nation. Often times we had to war with “true believers” of many stripes while, at the same time, fighting off “special interest” groups, recalcitrant and myopic auto manufacturers and  well intentioned elites of all sorts.

For example, NHTSA was the keeper of the current and future Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) numbers. When all of the motor vehicles an auto manufacturer produces in a model year are averaged together, the fleet’s average fuel economy mileage was supposed not to drop below its NHTSA assigned CAFE number.

Washington was full of special interest groups, lobbyists and government and political figures who tried to use CAFE increases and clean air gains as a way of social engineering – for example a green Detroit -- or as a way of mitigating climatic change or global warming. They insisted on advancing their Aral Sea Agendas regardless of the economic impact on our citizens or on the auto manufacturers.

This happened regardless of what kind of vehicles were then being produced and what plans were for future production; and regardless of the kind of cars customers wanted. Forcing product designs on the public against consumer wishes is what the Soviets called “centralized economic planning”. Mr. Gorbachev says it didn’t work in the Soviet Union.

Should we expect it to work in the United States regardless of which fuel-efficient technologies have already been incorporated into production vehicles and, therefore, may not be available for new fuel economy gains; regardless of the fact that the National Academy of Science points out that in the past fuel economy gains were mostly achieved by significant reductions in car size and weight, which meant that the occupants of those smaller cars were involved in more severe traffic accidents and traffic deaths increased accordingly. Is the public willing to trade off 2,000 deaths a year to gain more fuel economy?

When cars burn less fuel it encourages people to drive more. During rush hour more cars will be on our roads, streets and highways. Will citizens be willing to accept this increased traffic congestion? What will this do to carpooling? Will the demand for mass transit be reduced? Will interest in the development of alternative fuels wane? How will this affect the size, design and cost of cars? How will it affect the consumer’s choice of autos and their driving habits?

Like the sirens of mythology, some of the apostles of elevated CAFE numbers sing a sweet song. But does it beckon the nation toward the dangerous waters of an Aral Sea Agenda? Planners thought the Aral could be drained to achieve a much-needed benefit, with no significantly negative price to be paid. They were wrong. Do we really think that the CAFE number can be greatly raised, and that no significant negative costs or impacts will be costs incurred?

So what should the public expect from a new Administration? Will it set agendas that may be targeted to achieve good and highly beneficial results, but in reality are inadvertently destroying an existing good or an even more highly beneficial activity?

These are only a few of the many considerations necessary to be dealt with when properly managing CAFE, which is only a tiny fraction of the kinds of national policy decisions that a new Administration must routinely coordinate and implement. Yet it gives us a little feel for the complexity, number and magnitude of considerations that the new Administration must satisfy while avoiding Aral Sea Agendas and while setting and implementing national policy.