The Los Angeles Times published an op-ed that leads with a reasonable-enough headline: “Want to fight global warming? Forget fuel economy standards and focus on land use.” Considering that land use issues like slash-and-burn agriculture, grassland carbon sequestration, and deforestation are important aspects of climate change, there is certainly an intelligent discussion that could be had around how to prioritize action. One could pit MPGs against trees, gas against grass, or tires against fires.
But after the headline, things go downhill fast. The piece is about repealing California’s fuel standards, which mandate that auto manufacturers build cars that get an average of 35 miles per gallon by 2020. These state-based standards became obsolete when President Bush made them the national standard in 2007 and doubly so when President Obama raised the national mandate to 36.6 mpg by 2017 and 54.5 by 2025.
The author, Salim Furth, references (but doesn’t cite) that researchers forecast the 2007 standards would raise vehicle costs by $3,800. He describes his own analysis that vehicle prices have risen $6,200, making the implicit assumption that the fuel standards were responsible for the entirety of that price increase. Since the gas savings of a new fuel-efficient car ($2,000) is less than the increase in price, Furth calculates that these standards cost car customers more than $4,000.
After that assumption, the author makes the staple denier argument that since this single policy will have a minor effect on the climate but a major effect on the economy, it should be scrapped. He then abruptly shifts gears, moving from cars to land use policy. Instead of suggesting policy that would preserve more land to act as a carbon sink, Furth writes that California should instead relax the permitting process so that development is even easier. With more concentrated development, people will drive less, he claims—saying nothing of how more people driving to fewer destinations could increase time spent sitting in traffic getting zero miles per gallon.
If this sounds like a bizarre way to end a piece that started with a normal-sounding headline, any confusion is cleared up by the author’s byline: "Salim Furth is a Research Fellow in Macroeconomics at The Heritage Foundation.”
Furth, an employee of a group with a long history of taking fossil fuel money from the Kochs, Exxon and Chevron, is arguing for the repeal of a policy that reduces fossil fuel consumption.
The only remaining question is what drove the LA Times editorial board to publish such a meandering op-ed that called for the repeal of a state bill superseded by federal regulation, while overlooking questionable assumptions by an author with an obvious conflict of interest.
Maybe they were sleep-deprived after waiting all night in line for a Tesla?
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