Automakers and Car Dealers Lobby Washington to Reject California Greenhouse Gas Standards

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

Frank-O'donnell.gif
By Frank O'Donnell
President
Clean Air Watch

It’s a lovely Friday in our nation’s capital, but it’s being marred by the emissions of a new lobbying blitz by car companies and car dealers. They held a press briefing today. The target here is any attempt to reinstate the right of California and other states to set greenhouse gas standards for motor vehicles.

There they go again! The same companies that literally fought for decades against better fuel economy standards now claim new standards enacted by Congress are just peachy.

They are being extremely disingenuous. They are spending on lawyers and lobbying instead of better engineering. And, if they have their way, consumers will suffer. (Note, by the way, that in Canada, the car companies are calling on the government to raise gasoline prices! Keep that in mind when you hear them whine that all they care about is the consumer!)

The car lobby got to the Bush administration (you will recall the administration’s decision to reject the California standards amid a hail of lies, despite the legal and technical advice of EPA’s professionals). But now they are trying to seal the deal with Congress.

A couple of quick thoughts:

The car companies and car dealers continue repeating several big lies:

--One, they claim that the California greenhouse gas standards are “fuel efficiency” standards. That is literally not true, as you will recall if you’ve read the Supreme Court case or the federal decisions in Vermont and California which rejected this bogus argument. The California standards are designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. A side effect would be to improve fuel economy.

--A second big lie: that state adoption of the California standards would create a “patchwork” of state standards. That’s completely false. Under the Clean Air Act, states can adopt California car emission standards, or stick with federal standards. There are only two choices. There isn’t a third.