So essentially it’s going to cost people more money on every tank of gas while adding more pollution to the air. So it’s really unfortunate, you know, especially with the timing as we’re seeing the impacts of climate change across the country and speaking of California with that, you know, the devastating fires that those people have been dealing with out there in California. It’s not just California’s program. There are 12 states plus the district of Columbia that also follow California’s emissions program, so it’s more like. I believe the number is closer to 120 or so million people that follow California as authority on this. So President Trump and the folks at EPA and DOT are really going after a big chunk of the American population.
BETWEEN THE LINES: Andrew, the Trump administration, has offered up a very strange rationale for their move here to roll back fuel efficiency standards and greenhouse gas emission standards, and that is they’re claiming that lowering these standards will save lives. They say that people who drive fuel efficient cars drive more. Therefore there’ll be more accidents. They also talk about fuel efficiency standards causing automobiles and trucks to be more expensive. Therefore, people can’t buy the newest model of cars and won’t benefit from the standard improved safety apparatus in these cars. What do you make of this rationale?
ANDREW LINHARDT: Well, it’s kind of hard to even believe. And we’re still digging through all the documents to get to how they figured this out, but it is fairly clear that none of those arguments actually hold up in the real world. The idea that people are driving more and therefore getting into more accidents I think is kind of belied by DOT’s own stats on highway deaths, which unfortunately have been up in whole numbers, but I believe as a percentage of the vehicle miles traveled are still relatively low.
I think we can all attest that distracted driving seems to be a bigger cause of accidents these days than anything else. Making vehicles more expensive, even if the vehicle is increased a little bit in price, that is pretty much dwarfed by the savings on the increased fuel efficiency that you’d get. Estimates put it somewhere between $12 and $2,000 depending on the prices of gas and the type of vehicle.
But all vehicles are getting more efficient, so you know even folks that need to drive trucks for work or need to space for families versus folks driving smaller, even more fuel-efficient vehicles, all classes of vehicles increase in their fuel efficiency, which really saves everyone money and really reduces emissions. So it’s really kinda hard to buy into the argument.
BETWEEN THE LINES: I wanted to ask you about effective challenges to what’s underway now with the Trump administration by way of these fuel efficiency standards, greenhouse gas emission standards. What is being done to challenge what the Trump administration is doing here?
ANDREW LINHARDT: There will soon be open public comment periods. We encourage everyone to take advantage of that. You can find that on regulations.gov and then also on the EPA and DOT websites. Anyone can comment and that will be taken into account from the agencies when they do the final rule. There will also be three public hearings and of course there’s going to be legal options that will go on with this. I believe it was 18 state attorneys general announced their intent to fight this roll back if this is what the final rule looks like. And you can expect a wide range of organizations like Sierra Club and many of our allies to also be involved in those lawsuits, but it’s full-throated defense of the these rules.
The Trump administration is really is going to have to make quite an argument to win this. We think these rules are very popular in the public sphere and they’re also well grounded in the law.
