Obama acts to reverse Bush climate moves

[MacBeth]

By Jeff Mason

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama will start reversing former President George W. Bush's climate change policies on Monday with steps to raise fuel efficiency standards and grant states authority to limit greenhouse gas emissions from cars.

An administration official said late on Sunday that Obama, who took office last week, would direct the Environmental Protection Agency to reconsider a request by California to impose its own strict limits on automobile carbon dioxide emissions.

The request was denied under the Bush administration, prompting California and several other states to sue. The official said a final decision by the EPA would likely take several months.

Another official familiar with the policy shift said Obama would instruct the EPA to approve the waiver allowing California to impose the rules. The state asked the new administration last week to reconsider its request.

If the EPA reverses the previous ruling, more than 12 U.S. states could proceed with plans to impose strict carbon dioxide limits.

California wants to reduce the emissions by 30 percent by 2016 -- the most ambitious federal or state effort to address global warming.

Ailing carmakers, which have accelerated efforts to build more environmentally friendly vehicles, have fought the California statute, but braced for a policy reversal once Obama won the November 4 election.

Obama promised on the campaign trail to take aggressive action to fight global warming and reduce emissions blamed for heating the earth. He is scheduled to deliver remarks on jobs, energy independence and climate change in the East Room of the White House on Monday.

FUEL EFFICIENCY

The White House official said Obama would also direct the Department of Transportation to move forward with setting 2011 vehicle fuel efficiency standards by March.

The president's memorandum would instruct the agency to reconsider how such standards are set for later years in a separate process, he said.

The Bush administration sought to finish the fuel efficiency regulation by December, but took no action due to the uncertain financial prospects of U.S. automakers.

Automakers, including big foreign manufacturers, have opposed the California waiver on grounds that approving it would create a confusing patchwork of state rules based on tailpipe emissions.

The California statute was intended to take effect for 2009 model year vehicles already in showrooms, while the federal government, according to Obama's order, will have its own new efficiency rules in place by March for cars made between 2011-2015. The federal standards are considered weaker.

Activists welcomed the news.

"These actions are a clear demonstration that President Obama recognizes the urgency of moving America to clean energy and tackling the climate crisis in 2009," said Frances Beinecke, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council.

California Sen. Barbara Boxer, who chairs the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, promised to work with the EPA to ensure the California waiver moved forward quickly.

Obama has spent his first few days in office overturning his predecessor's policies. On Thursday, he signed an order to close the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, within a year and he lifted restrictions on Friday on U.S. government funding for groups that provide abortion services abroad.

Shortly after his victory in the November 4 election, Obama reiterated his commitment to bringing the United States firmly back into the fold of nations trying to reach a global agreement to limit emissions once the first phase of the Kyoto Protocol runs out at the end of 2012.


www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSTRE50P0CL20090126?feedType=nl&feedName=usmorningdigest&pageNumber=2&virtualBrandChannel=10112

[wheelspinner]

Hopefully he has more luck than Kevin07. He ran on a platform of addressing climate change - it was a big differentiator from Howard. Early on in his term, he ratified Kyoto and we all got excited.

But he's been got at by big business. His recently announced offset scheme will actually pay our biggest polluters without them needing to reduce their carbon outputs at all. Under his policies, Australia will contribute less than squat to the global carbon reduction effort.

In these economic times it is really easy to wave the jobs banner and pressure politicians into taking the easy option. Long term thinking is not popular with people who fear for their short-term survival. Obama will find it very, very difficult to overcome this and do anything meaningful.

[Calluna]

I have mixed feelings on this one. While I do want to see automakers pushed to develop even cleaner engines, if they're already struggling and getting bail-out money, where are they supposed to get the money to implement these changes? You don't just roll out a new car without a lot of expense in building the plant that's going to manufacture that car. Instead of the sort of bailout packages they're being handed now, I'd prefer to see the money loaned to them specifically for such projects.

I also am not fond of every state having its own separate laws on emissions. That's part of what drives costs up, when manufacturers have to build different products to please every different state's requirements. If there's a standard that isn't too costly to the consumer and is a good idea to include, then it should be a single Federal standard, not something done at the whims of the states.

[Pax]

This is probably not a workable solution either, but carmakers could meet the standards simply by selling more small vehicles (or fewer large vehicles). The rules are about fleet average sales. Of course, car companies have only so much capacity to build small cars... that's where it might break down.

[oskar]

Or set the standard(s) as being the quantity of pollutants emitted per mile travelled.

[wheelspinner]

Jan 26, 2009 8:09:30 GMT -5 Calluna said:

I also am not fond of every state having its own separate laws on emissions. That's part of what drives costs up, when manufacturers have to build different products to please every different state's requirements. If there's a standard that isn't too costly to the consumer and is a good idea to include, then it should be a single Federal standard, not something done at the whims of the states.

Actually all they need to do is design and build to the standards that apply in the toughest State (CA?). That design should pass in all other states, so there is still only a need to build to one standard.

[Pax]

I don't know what it would take to have our cars meet those standards, now. Unfortunately, the time to implement those standards -- when companies could actually afford to do it -- is long past, due to government foot-dragging over the last decade or two.

I'd almost be willing to give them a break for now, but I think they'll ALWAYS argue that it's too expensive to build more-efficient cars (factory retooling, etc.). Or maybe the rules should be on the demand side rather than the supply side: Simply make it more expensive to buy a ridiculously large car. Or make it so that you need to demonstrate a need to own such a car. Or make it so that, in every state, you're required to have more than one person in a vehicle over a certain weight.

There's no perfect solution, but this idiocy of people driving alone to work in 3000-pound cars every day is assinine. Consider that what you're really doing is moving about 150 pounds of meat from one place to another. We complain about gas prices and we all know that the money we put in our gas tanks goes directly to the people who use that money to buy weapons to try to kill us and our allies, and yet we deliberately buy vehicles that perform their main purpose on average with an efficiency of no better than 5%. That figure drops to 1.25% when you consider that standard car engines operate at 25% efficiency, that is, only 25% of gas burned actually translates into motion... the rest becomes heat and noise.

A 300-lb person in that 3000-lb vehicle makes 10% ideal, 2.5% actual.

That's what we're expending most of our most useful -- and finite, as in, once it's gone, it's gone forever -- resource on.

[Rob]

It's not as though California is some tiny state like North Dakota, where very few vehicles are sold each year and where vehicle emissions are negligible sources of pollution. California has a huge problem and a right to try to solve it.

As for stricter fuel-efficiency and emissions standards now, the automakers are going to tell Congress that they don't have the money to implement them. They're going to say, "If you want us to do this now, you'll have to fund it, and furthermore, you're going to have to keep funneling money to us much longer than you otherwise would have, because the demand for fuel-efficient cars really is not significant with regular gas at $1.60." Then somebody's going to say, "You know, the economy is in terrible shape right now and we have a limited amount of money to put toward fixing that" — or at least I'm hoping somebody figures out that "limited" part — "and this probably isn't the best investment right now."

Pax, I think change has to come from the demand side. Give people tax credits for buying green cars, maybe. Give vouchers. Some states charge registration fees by weight. I'm just afraid that pushing Detroit to do this now, by regulation, only gives automakers an excuse to blame the government for their failure. I don't think it will make it actually happen.

[gr8designer]

Detroit always resists change. Remember how seat belts were going to make cars so expensive that no one would buy them? Catalytic converters? Air bags? Detroit does nothing until it's forced.

[Pax]

Rob - I agree. Again, to quote Reagan: Subsidize the things you like, tax the things you don't.