Really, the fault of the regulations is that the penalties for the number of vehicles in the heavy polluting category weren’t nearly stiff enough. That’s a big part of why the automakers went the opposite direction and just made bigger and heavier vehicles - they could.
The Toyota Tundra honestly makes the Ford F150 feel small.
You’re mostly right. The main problem is that manufacturers chose to ignore the spirit of the US CAFE fuel economy regulations, and instead build everything bigger and bigger. That’s why quarter-ton trucks grew to the size of the F150 in the year 2000 when they were quite a bit smaller before.
It’s not the fault of the regulation. It is the fault of the manufacturers and to an equal extent, of consumers for preferring gigantic vehicles.
And let’s not let GM off the hook for the 1990s Suburban, which began to, quite literally, dominate the roads. Those fuckers were the original huge grocery getter, and they had truly awful turning radius and blind spots. You just couldn’t drive them safely or courteously if you tried. So of course everyone wanted more powerful and bigger vehicles to compete.
Not trying to be a dick here, but do you honestly think that you, a non-expert who likely doesn’t even practice in ecology or environmental sciences, are the authority here on whether any studies have attempted to account for the water consumption based on the feed variety and sources?
Because if you thought of it as a way to shoot down a random internet comment, then the experts who work in the field have certainly done so and followed through with those calculations already. Have you ever met a professor? They fucking love to tear apart arguments because it gets their names into publications and that’s how they earn tenure and notoriety for grant funding.