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E.P.A. Prepares to Roll Back Rules Requiring Cars Be Cleaner and More Efficient
- p0wn 9y agoGreat we can finally drive the 6000 SUX.
- winrid 9y agoThis won’t do much good for the automakers either. They want to sell one version of a platform to all states. Dividing the standards makes things more expensive - they would absolutely have to do something about California’s waiver, which I doubt will happen while Trump is still in office. I don’t get their agenda.
- Baikal2002 9y ago1. Repeal every piece of legislation enacted by or under President Obama. 2. ???? 3. Profit
- URSpider94 9y agoThey’re going to take on California. If they can pack the Federal bench with enough conservative judges, they just might win.
- aaronblohowiak 9y agoAbuse of interstate commerce clause has led to this abominable overreach of the federal government where states can’t self-rule in terms of setting more strict laws. As long as the fourteenth is followed, the fed government can gtfo.
- stevenwoo 9y agoThey only need one more seat to change hands on the Supreme Court then they choose a case in the friendliest or most split appeals circuit court. Pretty much anything would be open for interpretation again, it's the Federalist Society dream opportunity.
- tankerdude 9y agoThey don’t have to. The EPA has final word and CA has been filing an exemption that the EPA has said yes to until this bozo came into office. My dislike of the guy in Washington has been very high the last ~1.2 years.
- Gibbon1 9y agoCalifornia could just impose a carbon tax on the sale of cars and trucks calculated based on mileage. Truck gets 15mpg. Expected life 200,000 miles. That's 13,333 gallons of gasoline, or 20 lbs Co2/gal * 13,333 /2000 lbs/ton = 133 tons of CO2. Say $50 per ton X 130 tones -> $6600 carbon tax. Do the same thing with NOX emissions. Bump it high enough that a non hybrid will cost an extra $5000.
- ams6110 9y agoCARB standards were always more strict. If that standard is now applied nationally, it happened recently. So going back to different requirements for states that follow CARB vs. states that don't would just be going back to the status quo of a few years ago.
- rconti 9y agoSeems like yet another own goal. If 12 states are now following the CARB model, and european emissions for both petrol and diesel engines are getting ever more stringent, why would automakers even want to bother with the remaining 38 states that have more lax standards? I'm not saying it's equally easy to comply with CARB and euro standards, just that the effort involved in meeting both of those is probably not worth skipping out on just to sell cars in less-populated states. So, pass a pointless regulation that does nothing but point out how limited your power is?
- ianai 9y agoSeems like something the Russians would have ordered Trump to do.
- maxxxxx 9y agoI don't get it. Emission regulations are market friendly. All competitors play on a level playing field. Less emissions improve quality of life enormously. To me rolling back environmental rules is plain evil and extremely shortsighted. "Make America dirty again"?
- crooked-v 9y agoThe goals of the Republican party have been reduced to "do whatever makes liberals angry, even if it means shooting yourself in the foot".
- petre 9y agoHow is tight regulation "liberal"?
- fjsolwmv 9y agoIn USA "liberal" means both "progressive" and "libertarian", because we are dumb at politics. Sorry.
- nl 9y agoliberal doesn't mean libertarian in the US.
- unchocked 9y agoIt means something different in American political culture. The American right has successfully framed liberalism as illiberalism, and illiberalism as "freedom". Classical liberals of course do not believe in positive rights. The American right started calling progressives who believe in positive rights "liberal" because unconditional access to social services seems permissive to an authoritarian. Ignorance and spite then ran unchecked for a few generations and authoritarians now use liberal as a pejorative for anyone not on their spectrum, raising hope that the term may boomerang into correct usage. Authoritarians currently refer to authoritarianism as "freedom".
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- vikeri 9y agoWhile policy will always be more important than individual contributions, for people wondering what they can do to address their personal carbon footprint without having a negative impact on their life: https://www.goclimateneutral.org https://www.goclimateneutral.org Btw, I'm not affiliated with them in any way. Just think it's a great service.
- leeoniya 9y agoif you're an automaker, why risk not following cleaner standards even if not legally obligated? the probability of the next administration enforcing stricter standards is very high, so might as well get a head start rather than save a few $ today and be left unable to compete 4 years from now due to R&D + mfg stagnation. who actually sees a long term trend towards greater inefficiencies?
- saagarjha 9y ago> Scott Pruitt, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, is expected to frame the initiative as eliminating a regulatory burden on automakers that will result in more affordable trucks, vans and sport utility vehicles for buyers I don't understand why the head of the EPA has any business in making trucks, vans, and SUVs more affordable for buyers.
- daveFNbuck 9y agoCost needs to be a factor in the decisions the EPA makes. If it weren't, cars wouldn't be allowed at all.
- davidkuhta 9y agoI think this may be more nuanced by the addition of a caveat that the EPA should be factoring cost in if cost is necessary to explain the "technical, operational, and legal details necessary to implement laws" enacted by congress which they seek to implement regulation. For example regulations pertaining to a "Consumer Re-affordability Automotive Program Act" versus a "Countrywide Automotive Reduced Emissions Act" (Quote from EPA's regulatory agency description)
- jacquesm 9y agoThey won't be more affordable, that's just a way to pander to the base. Nobody will be clever enough to check if these promises will be kept or not. It's hilarious if you compare this with the hysteria around the VW diesel scandal. This will have much more effect.
- mapmap 9y agoRegulatory Capture: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture
- Consultant32452 9y agoEPA emission regulations for vehicles is going to become less and less relevant as we migrate to full electric.
- myrandomcomment 9y agoTrump will be gone in 3 years, 7 at the longest. Two paths... It is highly likely the next administration will be more forward thinking and science minded then the dark ages thinking of the current one. When that happens and they clamp down on this again with much less of a time window it will leave the industry that cheered Trump on dead. Oh well. It is likely that California can keep this in court forever so no matter what the “rules” are nationally with 12 of the most populous states siding withCA it will not matter.
- lightedman 9y agoWhy keep it in court forever? CA made up its own rules that were more strict than what the EPA had. Car makers followed the state instead of the fed. There is a small reason for the saying "As California does, eventually so does the rest of the country."
- headmelted 9y agoI'm not really familiar with how the electoral system works in the US with regards to this, but there's something about this that really confuses me (even leaving my own politics and literally all science aside with regards to climate change and particulate pollution). It seems like it would be really expensive to roll all of these policies back just to reinstate them later, but isn't that inevitable when the pendulum swings back to the left? (i.e. Won't the next left-leaning administration move to redo everything that's been undone under your current administration?) Is there some structural feature of your electoral system that would prevent this kind of flip-flopping? (This isn't a put down by the way - I say this being from Northern Ireland, where our entire political system is based on a single divisive issue, at the cost of getting literally anything else achieved.)
- patentatt 9y agoYes, the structural feature you’re looking for is the informed, intelligent electorate. There seems to be some issues with that particular subsystem at the moment, we’re working on a patch to fix it ASAP. Make sure to read the release notes of the next version that comes out, there’s sure to be a ton of bug fixes.
- jey 9y agoWho's actually working on that patch? I thought all that funding was shifted to the Ministry of Truth and Public Enlightenment?
- patentatt 9y agoWe have our development teams hard at work in the background to fix all the bugs, but some of the erratic behavior seems to have been caused by a nasty malware infection too. Luckily our system has a great antivirus named Bob Mueller that is cleaning up that mess too.
- richmarr 9y ago[Edit to clarify what I was saying "not necessarily" to] I wouldn't necessarily assume that manufacturers will waste that time. I did a day's worth of policy work with the UK Department for Transport and the regional heads of some manufacturers so know a little bit about how they're thinking about the problem. In the past there's been a progressive reduction in emissions, pushing manufacturers to work fairly hard in the short term to meet the targets they've been set. There've been some noteworthy examples of cheating because it's not easy to balance emissions targets against cost and all the other constraints on manufacturing. One of the policies they're already discussing is to give manufacturers short-term breathing room in emissions standards so that they stop chasing local maxima and dedicate some proper R&D time to making super-low emissions possible in the medium term. So yeah, I think manufacturers will try and get away with what they can, but they're not stupid. They know this problem isn't going away (both from an environmental and a regulatory perspective) and solving it will be a competitive advantage.
- ageek123 9y agoHonestly I have a hard time getting bent out of shape about reverting regulations -- whether I agree with them or not -- to how they were five years ago. It's not like we're going back to the 1970s or something here.
- radiorental 9y agoWhile true, this issue is we are not where we need to be _today_. Any roll back is a set back.
- bencollier49 9y agoThis seems like it's designed to alter the playing field to sustain the price of oil against the rise of electric vehicles.
- saas_co_de 9y agoQuite the opposite. Electrical vehicles benefit from high oil prices so eliminating regulations that would reduce demand for oil (thus reducing prices) would reduce demand for EVs. Increasing demand for oil and increasing oil prices will increase demand for EVs because it makes them more competitive.
- ianai 9y agoThe oil market in the US is almost completely divorced from reality through subsidies and external costs.
- JustSomeNobody 9y agoIt will not make cars more affordable. Any cost saving will get funneled up to the wealthier shareholders.
- Proven 9y agoGood. States can have their own stricter rules if the voters want that.
- landryraccoon 9y agoFuel efficiency is a national security issue. Reduced dependence on oil means less involvement in the middle east and less vulnerability to energy sources controlled by foreign nations that may be adversaries (Russia in particular is a huge oil exporter). I am somewhat surprised that those who claim to be conservative would take up the mantle of increasing dependence on oil. Renewable resources based in the US are better for the long term security of the nation.
- jey 9y agoCurrently, the USA is the top or nearly the top oil exporter.
- landryraccoon 9y agoDo you have a source? Wikpedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_oil_exports https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_oil_expor...) lists the US as 14th. Saudia Arabia is number 1 and Russia as #2, as I expected. Another source (https://www.investopedia.com/articles/company-insights/082316/worlds-top-10-oil-exporters.asp https://www.investopedia.com/articles/company-insights/08231...) also lists Saudi Arabia as #1 and Russia as #2
- jey 9y agoSorry, I should have looked for primary sources. I do recall hearing that we've massively accelerated output over the last couple of years. Best I can find right now is that we are projected to take the lead in production[1], which admittedly is very different from being the lead exporter currently. 1. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-energy-iea/u-s-to-overtake-russia-as-top-oil-producer-by-2019-at-latest-iea-idUSKCN1GB0C6 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-energy-iea/u-s-to-overtak...