Horowitz: California Out-Maneuvers Trump Administration on Climate

Tuesday, September 03, 2019

Rob Horowitz, GoLocalWorcester MINDSETTER™

Donald Trump

President Trump’s reckless, irresponsible and determined efforts to roll back former President Obama’s initiatives to curb climate change received a welcome set back from a recent agreement struck between California and 4 major car companies that keep in place the main thrust of mandated increases in miles per gallon standards.

Despite the opposition of the automobile industry, the Trump Administration has been working on regulations that would freeze the existing standards for cars and light trucks at next year’s required 37 miles per gallon, doing away with the requirement that the fleet average for new cars meet a 54.5 miles per gallon standard by 2025.

While the automobile companies did want some adjustment in the national requirements, they are strongly against the Trump Administration’s “throw the baby out with the bathwater” approach because under the Clean Air Act California gets to set its own stricter policies and the likely outcome would be what the industry views as a worst-case scenario: a split American car market with California and the 12 states and the District of Columbia that adhere to California standards continuing to require major improvements in fuel efficiency and the rest of the nation using the watered-down Trump standards. The auto industry also wants to avoid the years of uncertainty, stemming from court challenges resulting from the Administration’s plans to do away with California’s long-held power to set more robust standards.

Ford, Honda, Volkswagen and BMW of North America signed the agreement with the California Air Resources Board. These companies represent 30 % of the domestic market for automobiles and there are more auto companies seriously considering joining. The agreement does give the automobile companies an extra year to meet a slight reduced 50 miles per gallon fleet average, among other compromises. In praising the arrangement, the participating car companies said, “These terms will provide our companies much-needed regulatory certainty by allowing us to meet both federal and state requirements with a single national fleet, avoiding a patchwork of regulations while continuing to ensure meaningful greenhouse gas emissions reductions.”

The momentum generated by the California agreement was buttressed when Colorado followed up, reaching a deal with all the major automobile companies on a transition program to better enable the state to adhere to the California electric car standards and goals as it plans to do in 2023.

The Trump Administration, on the other hand, had a predictably negative reaction, slamming the agreement and vowing to continue on its plans to freeze the auto emissions standards in place and ensure the spewing of 6 billion additional tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. It seems that President Trump is so committed to doing away with any sensible approach to limiting the production of greenhouse gases that even when the impacted industry doesn’t support his deregulation initiatives, he still goes full speed ahead.

This bizarre let’s heat up the earth at all costs approach can be seen in the administration’s announcement this past Thursday of its plans to loosen federal rules on methane, which in the short-term is an 80 times as powerful greenhouse gas as carbon dioxide. As the Washington Post reported, the administration will do so “by allowing oil and gas operators to largely police themselves when it comes to preventing the powerful greenhouse gas from leaking out of new wells, pipelines, and other infrastructure.” The Trump EPA is moving forward with this initiative, despite the fact that there is not unified support in the fossil fuel industry for it. The major companies by and large oppose it, while the smaller operations are for it.

As the evidence that the planet is heating up even faster than anticipated mounts, the Trump Administration is making us wish it would stick to ‘fiddling while Rome burns.” It seems President Trump prefers to light the match. Fortunately, California and other states are stepping up to at least limit the damage.

Rob Horowitz is a strategic and communications consultant who provides general consulting, public relations, direct mail services and polling for national and state issue organizations, various non-profits, businesses, and elected officials and candidates. He is an Adjunct Professor of Political Science at the University of Rhode Island.