Thursday, December 20, 2007

Detroit and the White House: Hella Earth Haters!

The Bush administration’s decision to deny California permission to regulate and reduce global warming emissions from cars and trucks is an indefensible act of executive arrogance that can only be explained as the product of ideological blindness and as a political payoff to the automobile industry.

NYT

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Well, state-by-state emissions regulation is about as inefficient as you can get in terms of environmental public policy. Haven't you ever asked yourself WHY emissions standards are set at the federal level? It's because conforming to 50+ different standards is extremely expensive for auto manufacturers, costs that will be passed along to consumers. While you might like the idea of cars being more expensive, this is not the appropriate way to get to a "carfree USA," as the people most affected by any price increase are the working class.

Anonymous said...

Under the California plan, there would be two standards. The California standard (which would be joined by another 16 states) and the EPA non-standard.

Detroit has been making two sets of cars for the last 40 years, because California has always had separate and higher air pollution standards.

The California standard for GHG pollution would change nothing in terms of the two standards which Detroit currently builds cars for.

So that argument is a red herring and that is why the EPA's own lawyers warned the Bush administration would lose this argument in court. As they will.

But their true goal of this decision was just to throw up another road block and delay more and more. Doing anything significant about global warming by committing to mandatory standards is anathema to the Bush administration and their friends in the oil and auto industries.

Sad.

socialscientist said...

Don't forget that the administration claimed for years that the EPA had no jurisdiction on GHG's. The courts said otherwise. So... they roadblock another way now. Time is running out on saving the biosphere while they squeeze a few more billion out of the carbon/auto system.