Lots of happy talk accompanied the Obama administration’s unveiling of new fuel economy stickers for cars and light trucks that will include annual fuel costs and information about emissions. The new stickers, mandatory starting with the 2013 models, are a big improvement on the simple miles-per-gallon estimates on the present label. If they were there right now, we suspect many car buyers would be experiencing a new sort of sticker shock.

Consider a new midsize Ford Fusion S model. At $4-a-gallon gas, annual fuel costs would be about $2,200 for 15,000 miles driven. The car emits about 250 grams of greenhouse gases per mile; the new sticker would give it a 6 greenhouse gas rating on a scale of 1 to 10. And that’s for a car with a rated mileage of 34.9 m.p.g. (actual highway mileage, as with all vehicles, is lower, in this case about 27 m.p.g.). Industry clearly needs to do better.

Labels can help consumers make better choices. But Detroit and other manufacturers make big changes only when regulators force them to.

President Obama now has a chance to press for those changes. His advisers are in the final stages of drawing up new fuel economy and emissions standards for vehicles produced between 2017 and 2025. One advocate of tougher standards, Brendan Bell of the Union of Concerned Scientists, calls it “the biggest decision the president is making this summer that no one knows about.”