Proposed Rollback of Clean Car Rules is a Lose-Lose-Lose Scenario

Why this is one of Trump’s deadliest — and dumbest — plans yet

Los Angeles traffic (Credit: Jeff Turner via Flickr I CC 2.0)

The Trump administration’s latest attack on public health and clean air is perhaps its dumbest yet. And that’s really saying something.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and Environmental Protection Agency issued a proposed rule today that would freeze fuel-efficiency and greenhouse gas standards for cars and light trucks after model year 2020. The proposal also seeks to revoke California’s ability to maintain the stricter standards it set in 2012.

In true Orwellian fashion, the Trump administration has christened this devastating sabotage of our health and future the Safer and Affordable Fuel-Efficient Vehicles Rule. In reality, this rollback will make cars more dangerous and more expensive by increasing the deadly pollution they spew and forcing drivers to pay more at the pump.

More gas-guzzlers on the road means more deaths from climate change and other air pollution.

Fossil fuel vehicles are now the nation’s largest source of greenhouse gas pollution. They also emit pollutants that cause smog and ground-level ozone that lead to asthma, other serious health problems and higher rates of pollution-caused mortality.

This proposal would lead to an additional 2.2 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions by 2040. In 2040 alone, it would cause an additional 170 million metric tons emissions — that’s the equivalent of keeping 43 more coal-fired power plants online. This massive pollution would hasten the climate catastrophe, threatening not only humans but polar bears, coral and countless other species already struggling to survive.

As all of us are experiencing unprecedented heat waves, floods, droughts and wildfires and the human death toll from climate change-fueled extreme weather events rises ever higher, the Trump administration asks us to disbelieve our own eyes and ears and simply ignore the actual consequences of its rollbacks.

Flooding in Texas after Hurricane Harvey, 2017

The death and destruction caused by carbon emissions is the real and existential threat — greatly amplified by killing vehicle fuel efficiency rules — not the number of traffic fatalities, which bears no relationship to fuel-efficiency standards.

The proposal’s claim that driving less efficient cars and trucks will make us safer is as bizarre as it is wrong. Rising fuel efficiency standards have been in effect since 2012, and our vehicles have become more fuel-efficient and safer. That trend will continue.

Making more lightweight cars, which improves fuel efficiency, does not make them less safe — the opposite is true. And Trump’s claim that investing in fuel efficiency will somehow cause people to drive less and own fewer cars is simply cartoonish in its ignorance.

The proposal would force consumers to pay more at the pump and spell doom for the American auto industry.

In another breathtaking amount of flim-flam, Trump claims to be saving us billions of dollars. But consumers would actually pay an extra $55 billion at the pump in 2040, and low-income Americans would be hit hardest. That’s billions of hard-earned dollars from Americans’ wallets dumped into the fossil fuel industry’s coffers.

Americans would pay more at the pump

And even by the Trump administration’s own estimate, this rollback would kill 60,000 jobs. That completely undermines the very reason Trump cited for killing clean cars, which was the creation of good American jobs. Not so, and his estimate is extremely low because building dirty cars will cripple the American auto industry here and worldwide.

The auto industry loses with this proposal. It has enjoyed ever-increasing and record sales and profits since the taxpayer bailout a decade ago. Our cars today are affordable, more fuel-efficient and safer, all at the same time.

The world is clamoring for more fuel-efficient and zero-emitting vehicles, and disincentivizing their development in the U.S. will just speed the next collapse, bankruptcy and taxpayer bailouts of a moribund and hopelessly unprepared American auto industry. Trump’s version of Making America Great Again is, in fact, a road to oblivion.

Producing less fuel-efficient cars would increase our dependence on oil.

Trump’s plan has the audacity to declare that the U.S. should no longer care much about conserving fuel. But decreasing American dependence on oil has been Congress’ express mandate since the 1973 oil embargo. Trump, apparently believing that it is he who makes our laws, is throwing that right out the window.

Projections indicate that freezing the standards at 2020 levels would result in Americans burning up to 881,000 more barrels of oil per day by 2035. That increase is more oil than the U.S. currently imports daily from Saudi Arabia.

Increased demand for oil leads to more oil extraction

Increasing demand for oil requires increasing supply, which means more drilling. But we must stop extracting dirty fuel — at home and abroad — if we wish to preserve any chance of keeping temperatures from exceeding the breaking point.

To sum it up, the so-called Safer and Affordable Fuel-Efficient Vehicles Rule is based on twisted logic, ideology and alternative facts. Worse, it flat out ignores the horrendous and irreversible damage done to our health, the environment and the sustainability of life on earth — all in the name of polluter profits.

We must and will fight it.