On Thursday the EPA formally started the process of rolling back CAFE standards, erasing all intended progress over the next decade. It’s an action that US car companies are celebrating for the immediate gain to their bottom line as they can drop the research and design effort needed to improve mileage and concentrate on selling larger vehicles. The proposed changes are particularly good for companies like Ford which has announced plans to drop almost all passenger cars and move to a lineup almost exclusively composed of large SUVs and trucks.
But the EPA is going beyond just rolling back the improvements that were supposed to happen in the near future, they’re attacking one of the core features of the Clean Air Act—the rules that allow California to set its own standards for mileage and emissions. The New York Times reports that the rules that the EPA has sent to the House would strip California of the ability to set alternate requirements—requirements that are often followed by other states.
Despite a laundry list of corruption that seems endless, Scott Pruitt is still running the EPA. Republicans in Congress have been willing to ignore violations that under a Democratic administration would have been the subject of endless investigation. And in the case of CAFE standards, Pruitt is moving with the support of automakers. And Republicans. But not the EPA’s Science Advisory Board.
Despite Pruitt’s efforts to purge the agency’s science review boards of actual scientists, there was still a protest raised by the SAB about the EPA’s twin moves to roll back CAFE standards and strip California of its primacy in setting separate regulatory standards. According to Bloomberg, the advisory board is concerned because the EPA leadership under Pruitt forgot to consider a few factors when proposing to roll back the standards.
The EPA didn’t identify or account for the potential effect on greenhouse gas emissions, climate change and public health and safety when it reopened the review, the working group said in a memo. “These would seem to be logical and necessary areas for scientific and technical assessment.”
So public health, safety and the environment were not part of the review. Just what is it that the EPA does again?
Existing rules would have raised standards by over twenty miles per gallon over the coming years, resulting in a savings to consumers and a sharp reduction in greenhouse gases. But automakers are anxious to sell larger, more expensive vehicles that provide a greater profit per sale. They see the CAFE standards, which include a requirement to meet standards for the overall “fleet” of vehicles sold as pushing them toward smaller vehicles.
in other countries, automakers have successfully created niches for small luxury vehicles, generating greater profits without bundling tons of steel. But US makers are still wedded to the model of bigger is better, and rather than attempt to move US market demand, they’d prefer to remove the barriers and just keep on doing what they do now.
Long term, US makers would find themselves facing manufacturers who are meeting increased standards elsewhere, and improved technology. Only no one is thinking long term. Or about health. Or the environment.
But in the short term, the effort to override California primacy is going t9 open a much larger fight than if Pruitt were trying to attack the CAFE standards without adding that issue.
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