From: TAKING THE INITIATIVE: Carl Pope’s Blog, March 6, 2017 Washington, DC
The oil industry, and its “deep state” allies in the Trump Administration, have lured US auto companies into a potentially fatal political trap, chumming Detroit by tapping into the deeply embedded penchant of the Big Three for chasing short-term market trends at the expense of long term value.
Excited by the arrival of a big oil ally, Scott Pruitt, to head EPA, the auto industry asked the Trump Administration to undo the recent Obama Administration rule locking long term, reliable standards for emissions and fuel economy. The industry argued that the standards, which it agreed to back in 2009 as part of the auto bail-out, were now too onerous because consumers were shifting to buy SUV’s again with lower oil prices. The argument is utterly bogus. The 2009 rules set separate, if ambitious, standards for each size class of vehicle, so while more SUV sales do drive up average emissions and oil consumption, they do not require the companies to make a single vehicle to a higher standard than they agreed to.
What’s really at stake here is the pace of vehicle electrification. Click here to read more.
Detroit’s Death Wish Comes Roaring Back posted first on Green Energy Times
No comments:
Post a Comment