Featured Enforcement of clean air

i love clean air, and water. and food. and energy. and underwear.

 

I'll add sheets and bed to bisco's list.

 

I'd say its both news and politics, not environmental. Its not environmental because the rule change will do nothing to increase or decrease unhealthy pollutants, and will have a neglable effect on ghg. The rule change though may slow electrification of larger vehicles, and will favor some automakers over others.

I would also say Mr. Becerra's irrefutable evidence is a bunch of BS. Given low gas prices it is unlikely that consumers will choose to pay the price for hybrid SUVs and pick up trucks, which means company fines or really just taxes. Now taxing these less efficient vehicles is not necessarily a bad thing, but we do know that many automakers just cheat instead of paying those taxes, the worst example is VW, but nissan was just caught, to add to the list of hyundai, mitsubishi, ford, etc.

Director Pruitt is also wrong in just killing the changes from 2020-2025 instead of trying to fix them. These rule changes although not great at least close the SUV loophole, and ditching them effectively continues to favor SUVs over more efficient cars. Ford and Honda were proponents of relaxing the 2022-2025 rules to be more achievable. Another alternative is a gas tax. The bulk of lobbiests though were looking for as little regulation as possible, a move that in the past has left the US vulnerable to oil blackmail. I don't think this is the case if we get to the 2020 standard. The change stops at 41.7 mpg cafe instead of 54.5. neither of these numbers are real. Last year cars sold averaged 25.2 mpg epa or about 5% better than 2016 or 24% better than a decade ago. The cafe number was 31.1 mpg using its rules. In 2020 if the fleet really hit cafe of 41.7, then it would rise to 34 mpg on the epa test, but it won't. The mix of cars will favor those that do worse on the test.

Freezing rules - favor SUVs and do not fix disparity between cafe calculations and real world. They also follow some deranged footprint math. Now there is good reason that pick up trucks should be allowed to consume more fuel, but not crossovers. The footprint rule means that people that just want a small truck can no longer buy one. The big trucks get treated better by cafe, so trucks like the tacomma or ranger that used to be small and inexpensive, now are huge.

 

We've been discussing this previously, and so now we know EPA is proposing to hold at 2021 CAFE levels.
I do not think it is unreasonable proposal, Hillary probably would have also tried to relax too. So there are some politics here.

We have a big issue that California and CARB states have been given temporary authority to go beyond Federal standards, which was intended to reduce smog. Now California says their goal now is CO2 reduction. It sounds like negotiations with California were unsuccessful, so now we have a court battle.

Seems to me the orig 2012 CAFE proposal was too strict and, for that reason, provisions were given for a review period to reassess the targets. I do not see where the law suit has a leg to stand on, as far as saying the orig 2012 target must be adhered to. The autos are still moving ahead with remarkable progress to be honest on improving MPG.

This law suit potentially puts a kibosh on the idea of less adversarial relationship between industry/EPA. The autos were bending over over backwards to try to comply cooperatively with EPA lofty CAFE demands in 2012, but in future the autos will have to be more adversarial if California is given power to force their will over everything.