Bid to dismantle EPA threatens auto industry
State-regulated emissions standards would drive up vehicle costs, writes David Booth.
You would think the Republican party would have trouble, well, trumping executive order 13679. You know, the “it’s not a ban on Muslims” proclamation that just happens to affect only, well, Muslims. In the short two weeks since it was signed into being, Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States has spurred demonstrations in pretty much every American city with an airport and a kebab shop, galvanized pretty much every single tech company in Silicon Valley to sue the government and, in a recasting I find almost too incomprehensible to say out loud, has forced the entire world, even Liberals, to re-evaluate George W. Bush as a paragon of rightwing intellect. Surely, the GOP couldn’t possibly do anything even more boneheaded. Oh, but it could. With all the hullabaloo regarding the potential for terrorism it’s easy for smaller stupidities to slip through the cracks. And, boy, is the GOP putting forward one that has the potential to rip the guts out of the automobile industry.
I’m talking about the Environmental Protection Agency. No, not the appointment of Scott Pruitt — an Oklahoma attorney general who has sued the Environmental Protection Agency no fewer than 14 times — to be head of the EPA. On the sliding scale that is Trumpian stupidity, that doesn’t even rank as an alternative truth.
No, what I’m talking about is that some know-nothing, firstterm Republican congressman from Florida, emboldened by the craziness that has been The Donald’s first three weeks in office, is putting forth a bill to dismantle the EPA. Not curtail its overly green ways or perhaps deregulate a couple of coal mines in eastern Kentucky, but shutting it down completely.
Now, I’m no friend of the EPA. As far as I am concerned, Obama’s eco-weenies have ruled that roost for far too long. Its mandates are out of touch with current realities, it promotes technologies that work better in laboratories than in real life and, ever since West Virginia University proved the EPA wasn’t doing its job by outing Volkswagen’s noxious diesels, it’s been in a snit that would do Mariah Carey proud. Just the fact it mandates ethanol in gasoline is enough to put me in high dudgeon. So yes, the EPA most definitely needs a reboot. But shutting it down completely? Surely, the stupidest thing the Republicans have done since they nominated The Donald as their presidential candidate.
The logic behind the EPA’s proposed demise has holes in it you could toss the Trump Tower through. The bill’s sponsor, Mike Gaetz, said, “states and local communities are best positioned to responsibly regulate the environmental assets within their jurisdictions” in his call for the EPA to be abolished by Dec. 31, 2018.
Let’s just parse that one simple sentence, shall we, and truly grasp the horrific ramifications 20 seemingly innocuous words could wreak. For one thing, turning over the EPA’s emissions-monitoring responsibilities to individual states is neither going to help clean up the environment nor, as Gaetz so blithely contends, promote the economy. Not only might this legislation mean disparate standards and regulations for every state, but also, if by some miracle, there is some consensus, I think the Republicans might be in for a big lesson in unintended consequences.
Right now the dominant force in state environmental legislation, at least as it pertains to automobile regulation, is California. Indeed, currently more than a dozen states fall in lock step with the Golden State’s emissions standards. In a vacuum left by the demise of the EPA, chances are that even more would follow suit, if for no other reason than at least California has some legislation.
I want no part of California’s Air Resources Board running the show. Compared with CARB, the EPA is a wilting flower of regulatory compromise. If California gets behind the driver’s seat of automobile emissions regulation, Elon Musk and his merry band of enviro-weenies will have gasoline banned quicker than it takes to recharge an 80-kilowatt Model S.
And Mr. Gaetz, I thought you were supposed to be probusiness? So, how come the one thing all automakers agree on — including, this time, the irascible Musk — is that jurisdictional differences in standards and regulations are a major business impediment?
You’re supposed to be helping the common man, yet allowing each state to set its own emissions standard is guaranteed to increase the cost of vehicles. Automakers have long been trying to coax governments to harmonize global standards for both emissions and safety so they can reduce development costs. In one short, misguided, probably-written-on-an-Applebee’s-napkin-after-happy-hour proposal, Gaetz is suggesting that they — including the American automakers Trump Republicans are supposed to be trying to help — might now have to meet multiple standards just to sell cars in the one country.
And imagine, just for a moment, the havoc wrought if, in a similar state of pique (seemingly his modus operandi these days) Trump decided the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration should also go the way of the dodo bird. Just contemplate the chaos if each state in the union decided to adopt completely different standards for crash testing. Or autonomous driving. Or something as simple as which side of the steering column to put the turn signal stalk. (Yes, I can see Alabama moving them to the “right” and California would surely keep them on the left, but where would “we can see them from my house” Alaska put them?)
H.R. 861 — To Terminate the Environmental Protection Agency — is the stupidest idea yet from an administration rapidly proving to be specialists in the practice. The EPA may be a treasure trove of overreach and comically unrealistic regulation, but it sure as hell is better than the anarchy Gaetz proposes.