TRUMP’S FUEL STANDARDS SAFETY PLAN TAKES SHORT VIEW
Who knew that freezing fuel economy would reduce highway fatalities by up to 1,000 lives a year?
Answer: Only Trump administration types looking to help our president find cover for undoing yet another Obama-era regulation.
Thus the president’s proposal to freeze tailpipe regulations that were expected to help save the planet from more killer heat and wildfires in coming decades while also saving us more money and respiratory problems are now being hyped into old arguments that bureaucrats are trying to make new again — all to excuse a bone-headed reversal of one of government’s most effective climate actions on the books.
Trump’s proposed rule would freeze emissions and efficiency standards at 2020 levels — the equivalent of 43.7 miles per gallon for passenger cars and 31.3 mpg for SUVs and other light trucks.
The freeze would end the steady improvement toward 54 mpg, a goal that also would help consumers pay less at the gas pump, less for health care, less for the costs of air pollution and less for government aid after climate-induced ravaging storms.
To rip a headline from insideclimatenews.org, we’ll now “lose the climate fight 1 mpg at a time” while every new gas-guzzler sold will lock in all those other costs for years to come.
According to the Trump administration’s own U.S. Energy Information Administration, transportation in the United States has surpassed electric power as the most important driver of climate change carbon emissions. Scientists say net global emissions from energy must decline to zero in the next few decades to avoid the worst risks of climate change. Those scientists say that can’t happen in America without rapid cuts in tailpipe emissions.
The Trump proposal, on the other hand, claims the relaxed fuel economy goals would cause U.S. fuel consumption to increase by about 500,000 barrels of oil per day, an amount that many experts told insideclimatenews.org may be a considerable underestimate.
How is this supposed to save lives, you might ask? Trumpites say that carmakers will meet fuel economy standards by making cars lighter and less able to withstand crashes. (Don’t tell that “lighter” part to Prius drivers, whose weighty hybrid rear batteries make snow driving a piece of cake while the cars — even aging ones — get at least 43 mpg.)
The Trumpers also say that the Obama-era strict standards are causing consumers to hang on to old cars longer because passenger vehicles have become too costly. Older vehicles are less safe and less efficient, the administration reasons, therefore, freezing fuel economy will spark faster turnover that will drive safety and efficiency improvements.
But that argument ignores car sales statistics that show that as fuel economy standards have steadily tightened over the past eight years, new car sales saw an unprecedented seven-year growth trend. Even despite a slight sales decline to 17.1 million cars and light trucks sold in 2017, that year was the fourth-best car sales year in U.S. history, according to insideclimatenews.org.
Meanwhile, killer wildfires continue to ravage the west, especially California, but the Trump administration argues that California, with its own higher efficiency rules, has no “compelling or extraordinary conditions” that would merit its own greenhouse gas standards.
Across the globe, much of the world, especially western Europe, is sweltering under heat waves, and polar ice melts flow at record proportions.
What part of this is supposed to save money and save lives? Oh, wait. Maybe the plan the Trumpers meant to talk about is the one that would raise money for their fossil fuel friends.