Obama counters Bush on auto standards
Says sound science supports changes
WASHINGTON - President Obama yesterday swept aside his predecessor's skepticism about global warming and reluctance to goad US automakers into producing more fuel-efficient vehicles, issuing orders that he said would lay the groundwork for breaking the nation's dependence on oil from unfriendly regimes and help stave off the effects of global warming.
"We must have the courage and commitment to change," he declared. "Year after year, decade after decade, we've chosen delay over decisive action. Rigid ideology has overruled sound science. Special interests have overshadowed common sense."
The impending new regulations come at a time when US car manufacturers are barely surviving, and after the federal government loaned more than $17 billion to help them avoid bankruptcy and confront the combined pressures of increased competition from abroad, a deepening recession at home, and an evaporation of consumer credit worldwide. But Obama said that while industry's problems must be fully considered, its future depends on building greener cars.
"Our goal is not to further burden an already struggling industry. It is to help America's automakers prepare for the future," he said at a White House news conference.
Obama ordered federal regulators to reconsider a petition by California, Massachusetts, 12 other states, and the District of Columbia to set stricter auto emissions rules than the federal government, a request blocked by the Bush administration. He also ordered the Transportation Department to move quickly to implement new federal fuel efficiency standards adopted by Congress a year ago, a task Bush left unfinished.
Practically speaking, the announcements are likely to mean that within a few years American cars on average will get better gas mileage than they do now, potentially saving millions of barrels of oil. Starting with 2011 models, annual increases will require the fleetwide average fuel economy to go from about 25 miles a gallon to at least 35 miles a gallon by 2020, the goal Congress approved in December 2007. If the Environmental Protection Agency grants the states' petition, cars sold in Massachusetts and the other states will pollute less than the national average, forcing the overall fleet of new cars in those states to adhere to emissions limits roughly equivalent to a fuel efficiency standard of 36.8 miles per gallon by 2016.
If the EPA lets the states regulate auto emissions, environmentalists say fuel economy standards could rise far faster in the years to come because California, an environmentally conscious state politically removed from Detroit, could drive the pace of change instead of Congress. California and the states following its lead make up more than half of the US auto market, so their standards strongly influence the overall fleet.
"He's telling the states that they can lead, the feds that they're going to have to follow, and really telling the whole world that the knuckle-dragging US is lifting its knuckles off the ground and we are going to take the global warming issue very seriously," said Dan Becker, director of the Safe Climate Campaign.
Fuel economy standards improved quickly during the energy crisis in the 1970s, but the auto industry successfully fought efforts to raise requirements significantly through much of the last 20 years. The overall fuel economy of the US fleet has stayed relatively flat since 1990, partly because of a loophole that lets sport utility vehicles lag far behind cars.
US automakers, which have been slashing jobs and scrambling to reorganize amid the worst auto sales numbers since the early 1980s, said higher fuel efficiency standards could cost thousands per vehicle, burdening both the industry and consumers.
Gloria Bergquist, a spokeswoman for the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, said adopting the California standards would result in a confusing array of state and federal regulations, and expressed confidence the Obama administration would find a middle way with a single standard. David Cole, chairman of the Center for Automotive Research in Ann
"If the industry is in total shambles, you can have any regulation you want - it's not doable," he said.
Representative Edward Markey of Massachusetts, who authored the standards Congress adopted in 2007, replied: "I'm afraid the industry will collapse unless they quickly implement a strategy to construct much more fuel-efficient vehicles. This is a way of helping the industry move toward that goal."
Ian Bowles, secretary of the Massachusetts Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs, said yesterday's announcement means that if the states get the authority to adopt California rules, within two years Massachusetts residents will be able to choose from "a whole new stock of cleaner car options."
"We've been in office two years, and we've spent two years fighting stiff headwinds from the federal government," he said. "Today represents a turning point."
Also yesterday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton named a new envoy for climate change - Todd Stern, a former White House assistant who was chief US negotiator at the Kyoto talks in her husband's administration.
For many environmentalists, Obama's urgent tone on global warming was as important as the message. Seth Kaplan of the Boston-based Conservation Law Foundation, which has helped New England states defend the tougher emission standards in court, compared the feeling of working to slow global warming during the Bush years to being in a 1950s monster movie, "running through the streets yelling, 'There are pod people in people's basements!' - and nobody believed you."
Economists have long disagreed about the costs and benefits to society of higher fuel efficiency standards; Ian Parry, an economist and senior fellow at Resources for the Future, a Washington-based research group, recently coauthored an analysis that came to a nuanced conclusion. Some benefits - such as reducing the need to buy oil from rogue states - are difficult to quantify, Parry said. And it is difficult to determine some of the costs, such as how much consumers will value vehicles that get farther on less fuel.
He noted, though, that higher fuel efficiency standards, without more stringent emissions rules, can lead to more pollution because when people can get farther on a tank of gas, they will often drive more. For that reason, he argues, raising the gas tax is a better way to reduce gasoline use. But since increasing taxes is politically unpopular, raising fuel economy standards is the next best option, he said.
Lisa Wangsness can be reached at lwangsness@globe.com 