One Nation, One Energy Plan -- but It's the Wrong One

By Warren Brown
Sunday, December 23, 2007

Some common sense has emerged from the compromised mess that presents itself as a national energy policy.

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Stephen L. Johnson wisely has overruled the unanimous recommendations of the agency's legal and technical staffs to deny California's petition to limit greenhouse gas emissions from cars and trucks.

Johnson's action in the face of staff and congressional opposition took guts -- the kind of guts clearly lacking in the hapless, congressionally blessed energy bill aimed at forcing automobile companies to raise their average new-vehicle-fleet mileage ratings to 35 miles per gallon by 2020.

That bill, designed to increase current corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards by 40 percent, was signed into law last week by President Bush. Both Democrats and Republicans are happy yet again to escape public umbrage by crafting a measure that does little to reduce our consumption of oil while appearing to have made great strides in that endeavor. It's a ruse. It will have the same effect on the nation's wanton consumption of oil as did the predecessor bill in 1975. It will do nothing.

There is a simple explanation for the bill's predicted failure: Like the 1975 measure, the 2007 law does absolutely nothing to account for, let alone to attempt to control, consumptive consumer behavior that has contributed mightily to our dependence on burning oil and the resultant creation of greenhouse gases.

That legislative failure by design lets consumers off the hook. As a result, it also lets politicians off the hook. All of the measure's supporters, Democrats and Republicans, can now face the 2008 elections without worrying about being accused of raising federal gasoline taxes or otherwise inconveniencing American consumers in pursuit of fuel conservation. Their green campaigns can thrive on the flow of truly green campaign dollars from oil companies that were allowed to keep billions of dollars in federal tax breaks in the same legislation.

Simultaneously, the politicians can chortle -- with background applause from the nation's environmental establishment, America's ersatz "Green Party" -- that their work will do much to curb our thirst for petroleum in a world that is demanding more of the stuff when oil is becoming increasingly difficult to find.

It's baloney, the political variant of bologna. Both smell good and seem appetizing before they rot. But both stink to high heaven when putridity sets in. The new energy bill is a stinker in waiting -- one that will do little to abate rapid increases in gasoline pump prices when they begin rising in earnest, probably after the 2008 elections.

Thus, it came as a surprise to me that anyone in the federal power structure -- perhaps with the exception of Rep. Roscoe G. Bartlett (R-Md.), a man who repeatedly has warned us about our refusal to take peak oil theories seriously and who voted against the bill for that and other reasons -- had the temerity to stand up and do something gutsy about the matter.

But that is what EPA Administrator Johnson did. I had expected him to roll over and give up in the face of so much support for what I call the "California Above All" approach to fuel conservation and the reduction of climate-warming greenhouse gas emissions.

But Johnson, much to my surprise and delight, just said "No." Good for him, and here's why:

We need one national policy affecting fuel conservation and tailpipe emissions. There are two simple reasons for this, both of which are painfully and expensively evident in the U.S. automobile industry. That same expense and pain, much of it unwittingly borne by consumers, exists in the global automobile business, where competing fuel-conservation and emission-control rules collide.

All too often, those competing rules -- developed, applied and brought to the marketplace at great expense -- offer negligible differences in outcomes and create much confusion in the marketplace. The California Above All approach, now mimicked by 16 me-too states, is representative.

Manufacturers effectively must sell two sets of vehicles -- those engineered to meet federal EPA standards and those designed to meet CAA (California Above All) and CM2 (California Me Too) standards. This is not an inexpensive requirement, as can be determined by anyone who has bothered to visit the mileage-testing and emission-control labs of domestic and foreign car companies.

Automobile dealership chains selling new cars and trucks in an EPA-governed state cannot sell the same vehicles in a California or a CM2-controlled state.

Check almost any online automotive retail pricing service. Notice the extra prices attached to the emission-control equipment required under California and CM2 rules. Are the people in California breathing any cleaner air than their counterparts in Virginia? How much more, assuming that there is a positive difference for California? Is the extra price paid for California-emission-control equipment worth it?

Johnson said he overruled his staff -- whose stance was based on a mixture of support for states' rights; a belief that the Great State of California, which cannot clean up the intellectual pollution of Hollywood, can force the world's car companies to do more to clean up their tailpipes; and several lawyerly concepts of what is "winnable" or "not winnable" in federal court -- because "the Bush administration is moving forward with a clear national solution, not a confusing patchwork of state rules, to reduce America's climate footprint from vehicles."

I support the administration's support for national rules. States' rights should take no more precedence in fuel conservation/clean-air regulation than they are allowed to take in matters such as human slavery or suffrage for women. Some things demand federal solution. A national energy policy is one of them.

As for Johnson's opponents, I have some questions:

¿ Where were you when the House and Senate were allowed, once again, to approve energy legislation without requiring American consumers to pay or do anything extra for fuel conservation or for reducing the carbon footprint of cars and trucks?

¿ Do you support a higher federal gasoline tax, or the imposition of another form of consumption tax to force consumers to think a bit more wisely about their new-vehicle choices?

¿ Do you support congestion pricing to help reduce rush-hour traffic jams in the centers of the nation's cities, where huge amounts of petroleum are wasted in nonproductive engine idling?

¿ How does legislation that asks industry to do big things, while excusing consumers from doing anything, help to reduce the nation's overall consumption of oil?

¿ Did we not try that in 1975? Tell us, please, what has been the overall real-world result in reducing America's consumption of oil?

¿ Finally: How is it possible that we Americans barely represent 5 percent of the global population, yet we consume 25 percent -- and by some estimates, a continually growing percentage -- of the world's energy resources? Is that why "they" hate us?