New fuel-efficiency standards will save money, gasoline and reduce carbon emissions.
So, naturally, Republicans hate them.
The Obama administration has
finalized Environmental Protection Administration regulations that will require manufacturers to double the gas mileage of automobiles and light trucks by 2025.
The move, first announced in preliminary form a year ago this summer, will spur technological innovation, save fuel, save money and reduce by hundreds of millions of tons the carbon emissions now being pumped into our over-burdened atmosphere. The new Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards will also generate in the neighborhood of half a million new jobs. They will require that cars and light trucks have an average efficiency of 54.5 miles per gallon (as tested), double what the standard had been for more than 20 years. (The way the measurements are made, the actual on-the-road change will take efficiency to around 40 mpg.)
It's arguably the most important environmental action the president has taken since he entered the White House. The product of extensive and deftly handed negotiations with 13 car manufacturers, unions and environmentalists, the regulations couldn't have come into being without another signature achievement of the administration, the rescue of the U.S. automobile industry. A less-noticed factor that also matters in making the affected vehicles more efficient is the administration's jump-starting of an advanced battery industry.
Mitt Romney opposes the new CAFE standards. Indeed, he wants to roll back the existing rule that would raise standards to 35.5 mpg. Too costly, too meddlesome, he says, totally ignoring that the savings in fuel costs will vastly surpass higher prices for re-engineered automobiles.
Truly an amazing stance for someone who claims his plan will make North America energy independent by 2020.
House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa has also strongly opposed the new standards. He argues, among other things, that California regulators had too much clout in the negotiations for those standards and that the White House twisted arms and played one manufacturer against another to achieve them. A report from his committee issued earlier this month stated that he rules are a product of "a raw political process designed to appease environmental extremists."
Quite the statement from members of the party whose anti-environmental extremism is based on conspiracy theories and scientific illiteracy.
Luke Tonachel and the folks over at the Natural Resources Defense Council have collaborated with the BlueGreen Alliance to put together a state-by-state breakdown of estimated fuel saved, carbon emissions avoided and jobs created.
For instance, 31,000 jobs are projected to be created in Florida by 2030 because of the new standards. Annual savings in the state that year—2.1 million gallons of gasoline at a cost of $8.8 million plus 25 million metric tons of emissions avoided.
An NRDC report shows that fuel efficiency is one of the key factors in driving the increase in auto-industry jobs:
In Saginaw, Michigan, for example, [an] automotive supplier has added 650 jobs and will retain an additional 1,000 jobs for production of electric power steering components (EPS) for U.S.-made pickup trucks. EPS, which replaces a more fuel intensive hydraulic system, can boost fuel economy by 4-6 percent on a typical vehicle.
More jobs, fewer emissions, more efficiency, fresh innovation. Republican leaders act as if these were bad things. They certainly are bad for a party eager to present the president as a failure.