The Senate's been debating an energy bill. Described by the Washington Post as "fairly modest,"
it stays away from radical policies, such as a carbon tax or a cap on carbon emissions. Its toughest provision, a plan to increase fuel-efficiency standards to 35 miles per gallon by 2020, is under siege by a bipartisan group of lawmakers from car-manufacturing states.
And there's the rub. Auto manufacturers, and, more sadly, the UAW, get pitted against sound environmental policy.
The current bill
would increase the average mileage requirement for passenger cars to 35 miles a gallon by 2020, up from 27.5 miles a gallon now, and would apply to light trucks and sport utility vehicles as well.
But leading House and Senate Democrats from Michigan are pushing a softer approach, and they have a good chance of getting some of what they want.
Senators Carl Levin and Debbie Stabenow, both of Michigan, are drafting a bill that would raise mileage requirements but would be more lenient for light trucks and would give car companies the possibility of an escape hatch by demonstrating that the rules would be too costly to meet.
Preserving union jobs in the auto industry is massively important to the people who work in that industry, to the economies of several states, and to the future of organized labor in the US. But that should not be in opposition to sound environmental policy, an opposition too commonly set up in recent American politics.
A 2004 essay by Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus suggests that everyone is hurt by this opposition - environmental groups, the UAW, and the auto industry:
Thanks to action by US automakers and inaction by US environmental groups, CAFE's efficiency gains stalled in the mid-1980s. It's not clear who did more damage to CAFE, the auto industry, the UAW or the environmental movement.
Having gathered 59 votes -- one short of what's needed to stop a filibuster -- Senator Richard Bryan nearly passed legislation to raise fuel economy standards in 1990. But one year later, when Bryan had a very good shot at getting the 60 votes he needed, the environmental movement cut a deal with the automakers. In exchange for the auto industry's opposition to drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, environmentalists agreed to drop its support for the Bryan bill. "[I]t was scuppered by the environmentalists, of all people, " New York Times auto industry reporter Keith Bradsher notes bitterly.3
Tragically, had Bryan and environmentalists succeeded in 1991, they would have dramatically slowed the rise of SUVs in the coming decade and reduced the pressure on the Refuge -- a patch of wilderness that the Republicans again used to smack around environmentalists under President George W. Bush. The environmental community's failure in 1991 was compounded by the fact that the Bryan bill "helped scare Japanese automakers into producing larger models," a shift that ultimately diminished the power of both the UAW and environmentalists.
The leadership of the UAW would no doubt argue that they were doing what was best for their members, preserving good jobs. But imagine if they had adopted the strategy of the United Steelworkers of America, which very early recognized the dangers of occupational diseases and related environmental issues, supporting the Clean Air Act in 1963, the Clean Water Act in 1974, and recognizing the problem of global warming as early as 1990. The USW not only understood these environmental issues as important, they stood against the steel industry when necessary - to the eventual benefit not just of the environment but of industry profits:
The 1990 USW convention also had as its backdrop the U.S. debate over amendments to the Clean Air Act. Among the key elements of the amendments were regulations reducing carcinogenic coke-oven emissions. The amendments were vigorously opposed by the U.S. steel industry which claimed that its passage would provoke wholesale closure of coke ovens in the United States, and force American steel producers to purchase coke -- a necessary ingredient in steel making -- from offshore locations. One company, U.S. Steel, rented buses to haul its coke oven workers from Gary, Indiana, to Washington, D.C., to lobby legislators. Against intense pressure, the USW leadership continued its support for the Clean Air Act, and convinced local union members to boycott U.S. Steel's buses. Ultimately, the amendments passed.
--snip--
The epilogue to the debate about the Clean Air Act amendments was a surge of capital investment in new coke oven technology. Ultimately, tens of millions of dollars were spent cleaning up the facilities; new work practices were initiated as well. Even though antiquated facilities were closed, five years after the Clean Air Act amendments were passed, domestic coke production was at 98 percent of pre-Act levels. Ten years later, during the global steel crisis of 1999-2001, it became clear that investments cleaning up the coke ovens had also made them more productive and energy efficient, proving the union's contention that environmental investments actually preserved jobs. By 2002, the expanding Chinese economy created a worldwide shortage of coke. Prices increased by 450 percent and the U.S. steel companies that controlled their own coke supply were suddenly at a strategic advantage. (Not online - available in paper: "Steel Magnolias: Labor Allies With the Environmental Movement," by David Foster. New Labor Forum 16(1), pages 60-61)
What if the UAW had adopted this model, joining with environmental groups to push for cleaner, more fuel-efficient technologies? What if liberals did not have to choose between a union-made car and the efficiency of the Prius, because there was an equivalent car from an American company?
It will probably take years of catching up, but isn't that what the manufacturers, the union, and the Congress should be trying to create the conditions for, rather than creating more loopholes for wasteful, dangerous SUVs? Rather than digging in, heightening the environmental and economic problems of the industry, shouldn't they be trying to dig out, by giving people a reason to feel good about buying American cars besides that they're American cars? The UAW should look to the USW (and its alliance with the Sierra Club) as a model. Manufacturers should look at the success of the Prius and the importance of national health care. And Democrats in Congress should not gut environmental laws for the short-term economic health of one industry.
Comments are closed on this story.