California Sues Automakers for Global Warming

ajs writes "Reuters is reporting that the state of California is suing automakers over global warming. California is claiming that automakers have 'harmed the resources, infrastructure and environmental health,' of the state. The targeted automakers are Ford Motor Co., General Motors Corp., Toyota Motor Corp., Chrysler Motors Corp., Honda Motor Co. and Nissan Motor Co."

Comments

Oh for the love of.....

[BWJones]

Oh, for the love of...... *checks calendar..... nope, not April 1st)*

"(California) just passed a new law to cut global warming emissions by 25 percent and that's a good start and this lawsuit is a good next step," said Dan Becker, director of the Sierra Club's Global Warming Program.

Now, I am pretty much middle of the road politically (Disclaimer: I lean a bit left though), but this is insane. Insane as in insanely bad. Hey, Sierra Club! This statement may have just cost you 2007s contribution from me. The global warming legislation had good components, but if you start allying yourself with lawsuits like this, count me out.

Lockyer told Reuters he would seek "tens or hundreds of millions of dollars" from the automakers in the lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Northern California.

Uh huh.... and what is your take going to be Lockyer? Oh, just a small percentage you say, but a small percentage of an obscenely large number of dollars is still lots of dollars, right? Will you be buying a new Bentley with your share? Or will it be a party in your Escalade?

While we are talking lawsuit, what's the logical argument/premise going to be for filing the suit? If we hold the automobile manufacturers responsible then what of the users of their products? Are you going to say that the drivers of such automobiles are "addicted", so by their logic are immune to prosecution? Why focus on the automakers? Why not grab every last dollar you can by going after the drivers and the cities and states that build the roads and freeways, because without them, the automakers would not have a market, right? As long as we are suing people because of global warming, why not airlines? Airline manufacturers? Smokers? Dry cleaners? The leather tanners that made your loafers? Hey, how about the computer industry? Or....... I *know*, lets sue all of the electrical generating companies and take us back to the dark ages.

Seriously though, I understand that there are lots of sources of global warming, but Lockyer, this is not the way to solve the problem by making the automotive companies the boogeymen. The real solution from an automotive perspective is to federally mandate gas milage standards that are more stringent than where they are now, provide incentives for more fuel efficient and lower polluting automobiles rather than the current system where there is an incentive for large SUVs, and work from the consumer side *without* filing suits to line your pocketses.

*RANT*Oh and while we are at it, Hey! G.W.B, instead of sucking money out of research, development and education, why don't you do what you said and invest in education and research? We are not going to solve these problems through a narrow focus on religious fundamentalism while we are excluding science education.

Jeez, sometimes I feel like I am getting squeezed on the far left by goofy loonies like Lockyer and pushed out of the picture by power hungry neocon fundies on the extreme right. What happened to the middle ground where people of reason and careful thought worked through compromise to help advance progress?*/RANT*

Re:Oh for the love of.....

[carpeweb]

I lean left, too, but as a market capitalist, not as a socialist.

The real solution from an automotive perspective is to federally mandate gas milage standards

That's less effective than increasing the cost of gasoline, which is more market-based as a solution. Yes, I know that artificially increasing the cost of gasoline might have secondary economic and political effects, such as giving politicians more pork. But it definitely

provide[s] incentives for more fuel efficient and lower polluting automobiles

However, I, too, feel the pinch between the ascendant right wing and the lunatic left wing. There's not much room for "real" liberals, is there?

Re:Oh for the love of.....

[BWJones]

I doubt that anyone seriously expects the state to win this suit, but they are at the very least drawing attention to the auto manufacturers' continuous efforts to keep any law that might involve reduced emissions or higher fuel economy off the books.

California is the home of marketing, right? Has it not occurred to anyone that legislation like this is bad press? Comeon now, you have some of the best minds in the world working and living in the state of California and this is what they come up with? How about some creative legislation, like providing state incentives rather than disencentives for more fuel efficient cars? Making metropolitan parking spaces smaller and providing drivers of micro cars discounted parking or opening up carpool lanes to micro cars like the Smart ForTwo? How about doing things like allowing drivers of micro cars to register their cars every other year? There are lots of other potential incentives that could be implemented rather than playing a legal one upsmanship that only serves to employ class action lawyers.

Re:Oh for the love of.....

[AuMatar]

Gas is price-inelastic. This means increasing the price has very little effect on how much is consumed (note that SUV sales and gas sales have not been negatively impacted by the gasoline increases recently). So no, raising the price of gasoline is an utterly inefficient way of doing anything other than causing inflation. Like most market based solutions, they just don't work.

Re:Oh for the love of.....

[Maxo-Texas]

I agree. The best way to make high mileage cars is to raise the price of gasoline by $1.00 and REMOVE THE TARIFF FROM ETHANOL SUGAR IMPORTS.

You do not need lots of new laws- lots of new officials to enforce those laws- lots of forms and procedures to fill out and follow- lots of lawsuits.

All you need is a simple $1 per gallon additional tax.

Re:Oh for the love of.....

[PhotoJim]

If California wants vehicles to emit fewer pollutants, it could change taxation policy to dissuade people from driving large vehicles, or from driving at all. It could improve public transportation so that people don't have to drive.

Oh wait. This is an American state. Market failures are ok, unless we can fix them without taxing anyone.

Seriously, instead of telling the manufacturers they have to meet a certain fuel economy rating, California should just apply taxes to vehicles that don't meet that rating. The further above the rating, the higher the tax. If someone wants to pay 35% tax on a Hummer H2 despite its fuel economy, let him. If the population of California still buys vehicles that drink too much gas, raise the taxes. Conversely, if they achieve a better-than-anticipated mileage, consider reducing the tax, or providing a small tax credit to very environmentally-friendly vehicles. Target demand, not supply. Give people freedom to buy what they want, but a strong economic incentive to buy what is best for society as a whole.

Taxing fuel makes sense too. The more fuel your vehicle consumes, and the further you drive it, the more tax you pay. However, this creates economic pressure on poor Californians, so it would have to be balanced with a tax credit system for the poor or improvements to public transit to mitigate the impact.

Sure, this will hurt the economy in the short run, but in the long run, doing nothing will do far more damage.

Re:Oh for the love of.....

[UbuntuDupe]

I hate people who take a teensy bit of information out of context and act like they know the whole topic. In an unrelated matter:

Gas is price-inelastic. This means increasing the price has very little effect on how much is consumed

Yes, gas is price inelastic -- in the short term. You are correct that

SUV sales and gas sales have not been negatively impacted by the gasoline increases recently

I also do not turn my li'l car in and buy an SUV on every day when gas prices drop.

However, if people expect these to be permanent, *then* they start making long term adaptations. Now, if we have a gas tax, and use the proceeds to clean up or compensate the damage from pollution, and people still drive the same ... er ... what's the problem?

Re:Oh for the love of.....

[ePhil_One]

By the way, I've always wondered..how the CA special emissions work.

Every X time period, you car has to pass an emissions test (required scores based on date of manufacture). If you car fails, you can't register it for use on public roads

What if you have a car you've bought outside the state...and move to the state with it.

Most cars these days a 50 state legal. If your's isn't, you are best off selling it outside the state and buying one that is, because the only way to register it in CA is to make it pass.

What if you want to modify your car (chips, exhaust, other higher perfomance stuff)?

What part of "For off-road use only" did you not understand when you did this to your car?

Do they make you take it off when you move there, or stop you at the state border and make you walk in?

So long as you are visiting, you don't need to change a thing. If you move to the state, you have X weeks to get a license and register your vehicles. (same in all states) Ok, some thing are plain illegal and will get you pulled over, but even those items will only earn you a ticket, it would have to be pretty serious for them to impound you vehicle.

I've always heard the joke about CA being the granola state

Its the land of fruits and nuts, get it straight. But compare the smag in LA or SF during the 70's to today; then realize there are 3x more cars on the road today. Pollution controls worked. Using them to call Californians crazy is akin to laughing at Linus T. for his idea to write his own OS.

Re:Oh for the love of.....

[glsunder]

Taxing fuel isn't the best way to go. It mainly hurts the poor and middle class who might not be able to buy a new car. A better way is to tax the poorest performing vehicles in a class and _use_ that money to subsidize the top ones. This way, if someone needs an SUV, they have incentive to buy a high mpg one. You're still allowing people to choose the vehicle type they need -- what if someone has 3 kids that need car seats? They basically can't legally buy and use a compact car. 30 years ago before car seat laws, sure. But not now.

The other advantage is you create a moving target. A 30 mpg SUV or 50mpg compact car might get a subsidy now, but not in 5 years when the average has been pushed up. No change in the law is needed. Likewise, you're not banning the 10mpg pickup, but the buyer might have to pay $10,000 in extra taxes to buy it. The big key is what comes in must come out (with a reasonable overhead cost). None of that crap where they divert the taxes in to lower housing property tax or give school superintendents a raise.

Re:Oh for the love of.....

[dgatwood]

Even better, it could fund the construction of about four or five more clean, safe nuclear power plants so we can remove our dependence on power plants that produce more global warming, e.g. fossil fuel and hydroelectric power plants. (Yeah, that's right. Hydro plants in some cases cause more global warming than fossil fuel plants thanks to decaying matter in the holding ponds producing methane.)

Then, California could mandate that all automobiles be powered off of electrical power using some of the newer, fast-charging batteries. At today's electrical rates, if my math was correct, assuming no conversion loss in the storage process, electric-powered cars would be equivalent to paying $0.125 (12 1/2 cents) per gallon at the pumps. With more nuke plants online, the price of energy would be even cheaper. This would have a significant economic benefit for the state, reducing the cost of consumer goods and driving the economy. This, in turn, would free financial resources that could be used to buy the next crop of automobiles, so in the end, auto manufacturers come out ahead, too.

Because they don't involve gasoline dispensers, mandatory electric cars (as in 100% of all new vehicles sold must be electric by 2012) would eliminate multiple causes of smog and pollution; not only would you drastically reduce automobile emissions, but you would also drastically reduce evaporation of gasoline vapors, fuel spills, etc. at the pumps. You would also eliminate a major cause of groundwater contamination---specifically, leaking fuel tanks.

Finally, this would dramatically reduce our state's dependence on oil, which would make us less vulnerable to the goings on in parts of the world where oil is produced. The long-term economic benefits are fairly significant.

The problem is that in order to remove our dependence on oil, we have to have a replacement. That means that the cost of battery technology needs to drop by a couple orders of magnitude. Volume will achieve this, but only if all car manufacturers are forced to switch by law. otherwise, they will look at the initial cost and say that it is too expensive in the short term, and would harm their ability to compete in the market.

And solving the battery problem is only one problem. The fact is, we also have aging power grids that haven't been maintained, coupled with a serious lack of generating capacity. Much of this shortage has been the result of environmentalism gone amuck, screaming "not in my backyard" about nuclear plants, all the while promoting things that are much worse for the environment.

That's what bothers me most about the environmental movement. It always seems to take a knee-jerk approach rather than a studied view of the whole system, and the result is that more often than not, the things that are pushed in the name of environmental reform usually do more harm than good. What we need most is a careful study of our energy policy in CA, a careful study of our generator capacity, and a detailed analysis of how much additional power we need to be able to handle EV cars. Then, we need laws that demand EV cars. It is far easier to control emissions from a few power plants owned by a few companies than to control emissions from a few million automobiles.

Re:Oh for the love of.....

[dgatwood]

And yet, we're still using about as much fuel as before the price hikes.

The use of fuel is not significantly affected by its price except over the long term. We might see fuel use drop over a ten or fifteen year period, but in that time, the amount of economic harm that high fuel prices has caused will drive our economy into the ground. The secondary effects are huge. My average price for shipping stuff to people has gone through the roof over the last few years. Where before I could afford to buy something for $10 over the Internet and get it shipped for $3.50, these days, I feel like I have to accumulate an order of at least $30 worth of stuff before it is worth the shipping price, as the minimum shipping cost varies from $6.50 to as much as $10, depending on shipper.

Now bear in mind that these costs don't just affect the cost of finished goods delivery. They affect the cost of shipping parts to the companies that produce the finished goods. They affect the cost of shipping raw materials to the companies that manufacture parts. And so on. This means that everything costs significantly more. For every extra dollar you pay at the pump, you're probably paying $20 in other areas as an indirect result.

And mildly higher gasoline has not had a dramatic effect on production of true gas guzzlers. They're still cranking out as many tractor trailers and diesel-electric locomotives as before. Cars don't make up the bulk of gasoline use. Fully 31% is used by non-transportation uses alone---natural gas, heating oil, industrial use, and electrical generation. Another 12% is used by freight trucks, 7% by aircraft. A mere 40% is used by passenger vehicles.

If SUVs make up only 15% of all automobiles sold, even if they use twice as much fuel as another vehicle (and given that they are usually driven shorter distances on average, that's a stretch), they'd be less than 30% of the automotive fuel use. That would mean that if you could get rid of them entirely, you would only cut our fuel use by 12%, but they'd be replaced by something, so you'd really only reduce it by 6%. And those are very generous estimates. A more realistic guess is more like 1-2% decrease.

Worse, recent studies show that the amount of energy used to manufacture hybrid vehicles is so high that they actually are worse for the environment than SUVs.

Ah, the ironing is delicious.

Re:Oh for the love of.....

[radtea]

A better way is to tax the poorest performing vehicles in a class and _use_ that money to subsidize the top ones

This is one of many solutions to this problem that are, as someone once said, "simple, obvious and wrong."

Good public policy, like good engineering, measures outcomes, not inputs. I don't care what class of car someone owns. Nor do I care that they are buying a gallon of gas today, which is what a tax on gas measures. Neither of those things has anything necessary connection with how much a person pollutes.

For example, a friend who lives in California owns an older car. But she drives about two miles every couple of weeks. Regardless, the emissions limits the vehicle has to fufill are based on some presumptive and quite false belief about how far she drives each year. Thus, the outcome we want to limit--high emissions--is estimated via an input--the fact of car ownership and its tailpipe emission levels--and some trivially false assumptions about how much the vehicle will be driven.

This is the kind of thinking that brought us Three Mile Island, where the engineer who designed the reactor control system thought for some unaccountable reason that the power going to the motor controlling a valve could be used to measure the the state of the valve, thus misleading operators as to the state of the reactor when a valve jammed. This is trivially bad engineering, and likewise trivially bad public policy.

If it matters, measure it. That is, measure the actual thing, not "something that I think ought to be somehow kinda sorta related to it in my incredibly limited imagination."

I know damed well I'm not smart enough to figure out an adequate surrogate measure of pollution that takes into account the incredible diversity of human behaviour. Trying to do so is like what the architects of modern security theatre do when they ban an entire state of matter from carry on luggage: they focus exclusively on one particular scenario that "just seems to me" to be the most important one, and ignore all the inconvenient realities.

The ideal anti-pollution charge is one that is based on actual emissions, not imaginary surrogates. This is both a technological and a political problem. Fixed power plants are easy to monitor. Automobiles could be retrofitted with tailpipe loggers that measured actual emissions, and a charge levied as part of the license fee based on the past year's actual emissions. But even this solution would a) cost more than some people can afford and b) create a cottage industry in tampering with the data.

The difficulty is that we would like any anti-pollution charge to only kick in above a certain level. We'd like everyone to have a certain amount of polution for free, or at least cheap. That way poor people wouldn't get hit by socially-regressive charges. The only way to do this is to somehow monitor fuel usage, which requires burdens of measurement and monitoring that are unacceptably invasive to many people, especially in the U.S. (although with your government, I can understand that a certain level of paranoia is justified.)

Political statement only

[Kelson]

Speaking as a a Californian of the (at least by today's standards) liberal persuasion... this suit is insane.

If you can't convince the federal government that there's a significant causal connection between vehicle emissions and global warming, you're not likely to be able to convince a judge.

Besides, the state just passed a law to enforce stricter emissions standards. Given the size of the market and the state's car culture, that alone will have far more effect than this lawsuit.

As for reasons, I think we need look no further than the fact that we have an election coming up in less than two months.

On the face it sounds insane...

[drinkypoo]

...but automakers have been doing all they can to avoid complying with legislation already passed in California that restricts emissions. If they don't want to comply with the law, why not go after them? Corporations don't have a god-given right to profit even if it means destroying our environment, which our dependence on fossil fuels is certainly contributing to. (I know there are a lot of you naysayers; that's nice, go bother someone else. Our industry and machinery puts out several times the CO2 output of volcanoes every year, and we believe that volcanoes have a measurable effect; that means that we must necessarily also have a measurable effect.)

Anyway, we the people power the government (through taxes) that enables these corporations to even exist. Why should the government (ostensibly though usually not literally the voice of the people) permit them to pollute, harming us all?

Germany is amusingly one of the few countries who have their act together on this, because their political process apparently actually works and allowed their Green party to gain power. Now, many industries there (and eventually, all of them) are being held responsible for their output, as should we all.

Re:On the face it sounds insane...

[Just Some Guy]

...but automakers have been doing all they can to avoid complying with legislation already passed in California that restricts emissions.

Sounds like a governmental problem to me. If the manufacturers are avoiding the limits by legal means, then the legislature screwed up. If they're avoiding the limits by illegal means, then law enforcement has screwed up. Either way, it appears to be easier for California to sue someone than to admit that their lawmakers and/or cops are ineffectual.

This is great...

[tx_kanuck]

I actually hope this lawsuit succeeds (wait, hear me out). If it does, then the California government has just opened the door for its citizens to sue them for not providing sufficient public transportation and thereby contributing to greenhouse gasses. They have the means to cut down on the required use of personal vehicles, but have chosen not too make use of that means, therefore they are at fault for requiring people to drive as much as they do.

And before anyone blasts into me that it's too hard to get public transportation working in a major city, look at cities like Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, London, New York, Chicago (ok, Chicago needs help), Tokoyo, and pretty much every European city.

This is great, go for it guys!!! Woohoo. (idiots)

(yes, there is some sarcasm there)

Re:Not Quite...

[HappyEngineer]

Ahnold's first move was to encumber the state by a couple billion zorkmids by repealing an emergency bugetary measure which increased a vehicle registration fee.

The act had been in place, should the state fall into a deficit situation and, riding a populist wave of revolt against it, he yanked the revenue generator.

Your phrasing is very nice. I like how you called it a "revenue generator".

Personally, I'd have phrased it like this:

"Arnold's first move was to fulfil a campaign pledge and repeal an unpopular tax increase that the legislature put in place to help cover up its irresponsible runaway spending habits."

"Separately, the California legislature once again passed a budget that failed to even attempt to cut spending in order to bring the budget deficit under control. At the same time voters continue their support of these habits by passing referendums that spend money like a drunk teen with his father's credit card."

"In a fit of total irresponsibility, voters also turned down a referendum that would have required their government to operate within a balanced budget."

"Just for fun, voters voted against an anti-gerrymandering law because they like things just the way they are."

I wish more actors would get into politics. Only the worst sort of person devotes their life to being a politician. Actors are able to glide into office on the basis of their popularity. In the past I'd have been annoyed by that, but I now realize that voters rarely vote people into office for good reasons. Paul Graham wrote an essay on how the most attractive candidates usually win. Therefore, it's better to get a wide selection of random people in office than it is to have a consistently bad selection of incumbents who have spent their lives as parasites on society.

Re:Not Quite...

[Doppler00]

That's B.S. How did energy companies "rob" California? Oh, was it because California was reluctant to build powerplants for the last 20 years and was thus forced to by power on the spot market? You know what private companies do? They buy long term contracts for power. I know an aluminum plant that did this many years ago and it came a point where their contract for electricity was so cheap, they stopped producing aluminum and resold their power. That's economics. Someone else needed the electricity more then them.

You don't get efficient power distribution when you start regulating it with the government. And BTW, true deregulation never occured in California, until it does they will continue to have problems.

Gray Davis got sacked because he was incompentent, even for a democrat, and people are pretty dumb about voting for hollywood celebrities too.

I don't want to hear anything about education spending. Most people around where I live pay almost as much in property tax then I do in rent. Why? Oh, it's for the CHILDREN. As if people aren't smart enough to choose their own schools to put their kids in.