Obama Administration Should Strengthen Fuel Economy Standards
- Luke Tonachel
- Vehicles Analyst, New York City
- Blog | About
- Posted January 7, 2009 in Moving Beyond Oil , Solving Global Warming
Today, the Bush Administration announced that it will not issue final fuel economy standards for automobiles, leaving approval to President-elect Obama's administration. This gives the Obama administration an opportunity to move quickly under the nation's clean air and energy laws to raise fuel economy and cut heat-trapping pollution from new cars and trucks.
The fuel economy standards, originally proposed last May, were weak and missed a major opportunity to save consumers money at the pump and to make the American car companies more competitive in the near future.
In a brief statement, the Department of Transportation said "recent financial difficulties of the automobile industry will require the next administration to conduct a thorough review of matters affecting the industry, including how to effectively implement the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 (EISA)." The Obama administration should certainly take a closer look at the proposed standards and strengthen them. Automakers have already developed plans to not only meet the proposed standards but go beyond.
In their request for emergency government loans, General Motors and Ford provided production plans to show they would use the money to make more fuel-efficient vehicles that consumers are craving. NRDC analysis compiled by my colleague Roland Hwang shows that the plans not only hit proposed corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) targets, but also demonstrate that GM and Ford can meet the more stringent California greenhouse gas standards.
In a world of insecure and volatile oil markets and intensifying global warming, we must move aggressively to clean up our cars and trucks. We can't rely on gas prices alone to determine what kind of choices drivers will get in the showroom.
Importantly, President-elect Barack Obama has acknowledged that it is time to stop reliance on oil prices alone to drive changes in oil consumption. On 60 Minutes he put it this way:
You know, oil prices go up, gas prices at the pump go up, everybody goes into a flurry of activity. And then the prices go back down and suddenly we act like it's not important, and we start, you know filling up our SUVs again.
And, as a consequence, we never make any progress. It's part of the addiction, all right. That has to be broken. Now is the time to break it.
I couldn't agree more and I recommend that the Obama administration strengthen CAFE and make it at least equivalent to CA's standards. Stronger standards will benefit drivers, protect jobs in the flagging auto industry and help put America on a faster path to cleaner, more secure transportation.
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Comments
Cye Gossett — Jan 7 2009 10:20 PM
I agree with you Luke. But, I am what many people call a radical ecologist, even suggesting that I would "spike the trees" to save the owls and let the humnans die. Well, that is not exactly true, since I work with Amnesty for Human Rights. I was born in New Mexico educated here and then at NYU and the New School un NYC.
I am a rabid ecologist and organic farmer, who has been both an archaeolgist and a field "op" for humans, environemnts and animals and the planet for about 30 years around the world. I learned food and farming in France, a place apart with so many eco-habitats, and climates and soils, etc. Americans don't even know what they had, or what they have or what they will have for farming.
I agree that Obama has a chance to start the EISA off right, but, I see no long term future for the combustion engines or the types of cars we have now. What do we have to do "put people in jail if they drive an SUV or sell one or own one." "Maybe!, if they push it that far! We will have to go with more fuel efficient cars and trucks for now, while moving ever so rapidly to trains and bicycles, and motorbikes, or even wagons. As Earthjustice put it: "The best environmentalists and farmers are the Amish or "Friends," the Quakers!" Think what they drive. The world needs to slow down.
We have to think beyond Obama and his "team", we have to think globally, as that is where we are. But bio-fuels will not work. I and my European colleagues have looked at this for years and we can only find a few ways to make biofuels work. That is a dream, or a nightmare, but a bad idea on any large scale. It calls for an unstable mono-crop density and size that is unsustainable, and non-regenerative. And, we cannot have GE or GMO for that is death sooner or later. I with my academic collegues cannot make this work, nor can any systems ecologist to date.
I feel that many of us have been working on this for generations and some new "kid" fell off the cabbaage truck last night and believes they have the answers, never looking back or asking any questions of the past. That will not work even in archaeology. We need new thinkers and old thinkers, but we must have theoretical scientists.
Best go back and out to the old time ecologists and WWII in Britain to find some of the answers. Anyway, Thank you for thinking and Thank you for caring. I am so sadly dissappointed with the people ffrom the Union for Concerned Scientists as they tend to be technocrats, not pure science for falisification, so that we can move forward with testable hypotheses. I think, often that I will have to leave this country to get a real and honest theory or hypothesis. I thank you people for working so hard to save the wildlife and the wild habitats. You are the best.
Earl Killian — Jan 8 2009 11:12 AM
Remember the EPA was on the verge of obeying the Supreme Court (Mass. v. EPA) and regulating GHG when the White House stepped in and thumbed their nose at the SC. The EPA had produced an analysis and report on what they proposed to do. Perhaps the NRDC should seek a copy using FOIA?
The WSJ reported that the EPA draft found that “the net benefit to society could be in excess of $2 trillion.”
That $2 trillion would help pay for a lot these days.