With recent powerful hurricanes having battered Texas, Florida, Puerto Rico and other Caribbean islands and the West still coping with widely destructive wildfires, the need for action on climate change has never been more obvious. It’s going to take a strenuous, persistent effort at all levels, including international cooperation; federal, state and local action, and private-sector commitments and follow-through.

Leaders in the auto industry get this, if their public comments are any indication. This month, Mary Barra, the chief executive, of General Motors, announced her company’s plans to move toward a zero-emissions future with new electric vehicle options. In a letter accompanying the company’s 2016-17 sustainability report, Jim Hackett, the chief executive of Ford, and William Ford, the automaker’s executive chairman, declared their company was “absolutely committed” to reducing emissions and improving fuel efficiency. In an increasingly climate-conscious global market, these industry leaders assure us they’re part of the solution. And they need to be: The transportation sector is now the largest emitter of carbon dioxide in the United States.

But the efforts of the auto industry’s lobbyists in Washington tell a different story. They are trying to undermine one of the country’s most successful policies to fight global warming: the fuel economy and greenhouse gas emission standards that are designed to roughly double the miles per gallon of our passenger car fleet by 2025.

G.M., Ford and other automakers agreed to these standards in 2010, but now industry allies in Congress have introduced legislation that would weaken them, and the Trump administration has “reopened” these standards for review, an ominous first step to potentially gutting them and stalling progress on cleaner cars and a healthier environment.