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The Oil Industry's Covert Campaign To Rewrite American Car Emissions Rules (nytimes.com)
When the Trump administration laid out a plan this year that would eventually allow cars to emit more pollution, automakers, the obvious winners from the proposal, balked. The changes, they said, went too far even for them. But it turns out that there was a hidden beneficiary of the plan that was pushing for the changes all along: the nation's oil industry. From an investigation by The New York Times: In Congress, on Facebook and in statehouses nationwide, Marathon Petroleum, the country's largest refiner, worked with powerful oil-industry groups and a conservative policy network financed by the billionaire industrialist Charles G. Koch to run a stealth campaign to roll back car emissions standards, a New York Times investigation has found. The campaign's main argument for significantly easing fuel efficiency standards -- that the United States is so awash in oil it no longer needs to worry about energy conservation -- clashed with decades of federal energy and environmental policy.
"With oil scarcity no longer a concern," Americans should be given a "choice in vehicles that best fit their needs," read a draft of a letter that Marathon helped to circulate to members of Congress over the summer. Official correspondence later sent to regulators by more than a dozen lawmakers included phrases or sentences from the industry talking points, and the Trump administration's proposed rules incorporate similar logic. The industry had reason to urge the rollback of higher fuel efficiency standards proposed by former President Barack Obama. A quarter of the world's oil is used to power cars, and less-thirsty vehicles mean lower gasoline sales.
"With oil scarcity no longer a concern," Americans should be given a "choice in vehicles that best fit their needs," read a draft of a letter that Marathon helped to circulate to members of Congress over the summer. Official correspondence later sent to regulators by more than a dozen lawmakers included phrases or sentences from the industry talking points, and the Trump administration's proposed rules incorporate similar logic. The industry had reason to urge the rollback of higher fuel efficiency standards proposed by former President Barack Obama. A quarter of the world's oil is used to power cars, and less-thirsty vehicles mean lower gasoline sales.
You know, it's one thing for Republicans to lie to our faces about this stuff, fraud and treason etc, but when a trusted business sector like Big Oil lies, that kind of betrayal is truly inexcusable. (Unless well-paid to excuse it, of course.)
You are making a wonderful world for my grandchildren.
But, but what about "enhancing shareholder value", that is what Milton Friedman and the Chicago School of Economics have taught our business leaders is their ONLY ethical concern.
Could it be that our entire business educational system has been corrupted by people who do not care if "people" live or die?
Maybe, Milton Friedman was the real Terminator
Conveniently omitting to mention pollution and greenhouse gas emissions as remaining concerns.
I'm thinking that you should have referred to it as a "Poorly regulated industry", or "Under regulated industry"
If that's true then the rules are not too harsh.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
The American auto industry is barely moving forward on EVs -- not that they're the be all to end all, but c'mon. The tech has been around longer than gas-powered vehicles and yet, even with modern lithium-ion batteries, car companies don't offer more than two models each -- most only offer one.
It's going to take regulation to force their hand; that seems obvious. With the current administration kowtowing to big business, though, we won't be seeing any movement on this for at least another two years.
And just think of the increased revenue from gas taxes! That ought to soothe any ruffled liberal feathers.
Hey, gotta cover the shortfall from the Republican's trillion dollars added to the deficit.
Oh they care... some folks care a lot: The US Chamber of Commerce cares. They want to keep republicrats and democians fighting over a border wall like a bullfighter wants to keep the bull focused on the red cape instead of his crotch. The good folks at The Chamber know that keeps them from debating using E-Verify which would actually work and shut down their free pipeline of cheap labor.
Air infused with toxic carcinogenic combustion byproducts.
Which combustion byproduct are you thinking is carcinogenic? CO2? H2O? maybe even NOX?
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Consider that automakers would have to make an entirely different set of vehicles for Paris accord countries (like Canada) and the U.S.
Then consider automakers would have to make different cars for states with strict standards and cars violating those standards would not be allowed in the state as they would not be grandfather claused.
Then consider that if automakers were to have 6 years to bring new fuel guzzling designs to market before (worst case scenario) Trump leaves office. And since almost universally, republican president = Democrat Congress and vise versa. So, within 6 years, either the executive or the legislative branches will be in opposition to the new regulations.
So, any car company who would take advantage of this opportunity would be run by idiots with no foresight. This would be corporate suicide. I mean I am sitting here laughing my ass off wondering who would invest years of R&D in a new drive train that would almost certainly be made illegal within weeks of it reaching market and could not be sold or operated in more than a small region.
Any leasing company willing to back these cars would be criminally incompetent and any banks willing to finance these vehicles would be suicidal.
I mean, who thinks these things up?
I am going to call bullshit on this. The proposed regulations were still on a path that was behind China, India, the EU, Japan, Korea, etc. The Obama regulations were still pretty weak compared to the world. Trump has knocked us down from being a C- student to a straight F. Source: https://www.nytimes.com/intera...
Even if you don't care about CO2 and global climate change, there's still the localized issue of actual air pollution in cities especially which kills. I drive a plugin electric and notice gas fumes and other nasty things in the air from cars.
Implying that "oil scarcity" is the reason behind these regulations seems like such an obvious straw man that at first I figured everyone would see through it immediately... but then I realized this letter was targeted at Congress.
#DeleteChrome
We have a culture where we tolerate lying when someone is trying to make a quick buck.
Businesses should tell the truth? Why do you hate capitalism? insert other facetious arguments here, etc
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Boy are you going to get it...
My personal perspective is that we need to work on Fusion reactors for electric power generation. It would produce nearly unlimited power for very little environmental impacts and nearly zero CO2 emissions. All we need is more R&D dollars... We KNOW it can be done, we just haven't fully figured out the engineering to make it happen. Also, why are we not shoving up Nuclear power plants as fast as mini-malls until then....
I'm guessing that the idea here is to control folks, not actually fix the stated issue, and THAT's why we are not really serious..
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
The choice isn't between oil and no oil. There is a middle ground where we regulate industry, control pollution, and use resources in a way that compensates everyone for the damage it causes. Wild west, zero responsibility bullshit isn't a serious business model even if idiots are serious about defending it.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
IMO what doesn't work is half-assed government coercion, like raising the gas mileage requirements for cars, but leaving a loop-hole in there (on purpose) for trucks and SUV's.
If we didn't have government coercion forcing companies to stop polluting our water whenever they felt like it, most of us probably wouldn't be here today. It sounds like the fresh water in the US, while still somewhat polluted, is a hell of a lot cleaner than it used to be back before the EPA. When it comes to really large corporations, I don't think anything really works except for government coercion. Government wouldn't be forcing them today if they had cleaned up their act willingly in the past.
Congress does CAFE because they are cowards. A car with higher efficiency can be driven more on the same gas. It does not reduce consumption by existing cars. If you genuinely believe in the cause, the only thing to advocate is taxation of fuel. A tax increase for the social cost of gasoline is something like $3.80 a gallon, more than doubling the current price. C'mon true believes, don't put off saving the planet for decades, bite the bullet and advocate that tax increase.
Nice drive-by there! But the "Obama" standards are trivial to meet. But now we overtly let the industry run the government. Unfortunately it is politically incorrect to place the blame where it belongs. Introspection is not a thing to be discussed in mixed company.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Nitrates and nitrites are listed as known carcinogens, yes.
Of course, car fuel has a whole bunch of additives these days and it's not always obvious how carcinogenic those are.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
You understand that in 2010, engineers demonstrated a car capable of carrying two adults, two children and a load of luggage at 100 mph with a fuel efficiency of 100 mpg?
X-Tracer managed a 205.3 mpg motorcycle carrying a comparable load.
We could be driving those, today. In eight years, that could have been mainstream.
Even the European cars, generally twice as economic as American ones, would be an improvement. American cars aren't instigated for poor reliability and high cost, they're not as efficient as anyone else's.
Worsening that competitiveness won't help.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Hey, if fusion was a reality today, I'd be cheerleading it, too. However, the truth is economical energy-positive fusion is still a pipe dream. It may be humanity's future, but it's simply not viable yet and we need solutions NOW. Flip over and talk about fission reactors... well, that's a completely different problem. The main problem is one that leftists and preppers should *both* understand - when shit hits the fan the badly designed reactors melt down and explode. The superior designs are safer but much more expensive and thus how can we be sure that corporations won't cut corners? Most of our nuclear power is the "melt down and explode" type in the USA and Japan. The more stable reactors they use in France, for example, mostly aren't approved by the NRC in the USA. Stupid yes, but still true.
Just so it's TOTALY clear... When you say "explode" you are discussing hydrogen explosions which are only possible concerns in very extreme situations in nuclear power plants. Modern designs do NOT suffer from the same issues as the various operating reactors in the USA today.
The only reason why we don't have modern nuclear reactors in operation here in the USA is because the "environmentalist" lobby has basically made it too expensive. It's not dangerous.
I remember being a college student during the final phases of licensing for the Sharon Harris plant outside of Raleigh. At the time "equal time" was a rule the media had to practice, so the environmentalists where given free TV Time all over the place. "It's not too late!" was their campaign slogan. I asked one of them to go pull their electric meter if they really where serious, live off the grid, prove you are really concerned.... Needless to say, the lights stayed on at home.
IF we are serious about climate change and environmental concerns, these folks should be marching at every fossil fueled power plant demanding it be replaced with a nuclear one. They should be demanding dollars for fusion R&D. Where are they?
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Fusion is dead. Even when they figure out how to make it work, it's going to cost at least 10x what solar or wind costs now and those are still getting cheaper. Fision can't produce power below 25 cents per KWH and it doesn't use massive cryogenically cooled super conducting magnets.
Harsh? Depends on whose perspective you're taking. As the standards currently stand, many cities such as New York are enjoying air quality that would be unimaginably good thirty years ago.. But there are still a number of cities that aren't there yet, like LA, Pittsburgh, and Indianapolis.
One of Obama's major policy goals was energy independence. He was very pro-fracking, despite its extreme unpopularity with the Democratic base. He wanted US natural gas exports would to Russian "gas diplomacy" in Europe. Likewise crude petroleum production nearly doubled under his watch, after years of decline. Last year the US became a net exporter of gas and this year, of oil, both facts which President Trump hailed as an accomplishment for his administration, but these things can't be instantly conjured by sheer mojo; or even by Rick Perry's white-hot intellect. It takes years.
What energy independence that do do with "harsh" emissions standards? All the relatively easy ways of improving ICE emissions are already on every car sold. Further reductions in emissions have to be done by making the car more fuel efficient, or at least by not making them less efficient.
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Well, China's a special case; China has a tendency to write strict sounding but vague laws, then enforce those laws in what *appears* to be a very spotty way. This is, in fact, how the party exerts control over people while adopting a progressive sounding posture. Everyone's guilty of something, so people keep away from things that will seriously antagonize the party. The party doesn't need to install zampolits everywhere like the Soviets did; uncertainty makes people into their own political commissars.
But China aside, there are no such things as "American car companies" anymore. Letting car companies sell dirty, primitive junk here in the US might help some, but they're still stuck selling better cars overseas. And they probably don't have much faith in the staying power of the more over-the-top deregulation.
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"A middle class was not possible until the energy freedom that oil provided" Instantly debunked bullshit, next?
It was so instant that I missed your evidence that debunked it.
There are different forms of critical mass, nuclear reactors do not have the ability to cause a nuclear explosion as they are NOT prompt critical, but moderated critical.
In order to cause a nuclear explosion you have to have a critical mass that is prompt critical, where unmoderated neutrons can sustain the chain reaction. This requires a very fast assembly of the critical mass, because you need to get the device prompt critical before it disassembles itself from the heat of being moderated critical, where moderated neutrons, ones that have been slowed down either by distance or by hitting something sustain the chain reaction.
So, like the pulsar reactor I got to see once, you can actually pull out all the control rods and it will not detonate in a nuclear explosion. The pulsar reactor would actually pulse to a very high power level for a very short period of time and cycle up and down rapidly, but wouldn't explode. A power reactor who's control rods got fully removed would produce a LOT of heat, but as the temperature and pressure went up it would vent water/steam and once the steam bubbles started to form in the reactor core, the nuclear reaction would be inhibited, with less and less moderated neutrons being available. Problem is, for most boiling water reactors, that the decay heat would far exceed the core structure's ability to stay in place, it melts and bad things start happening. You get steam explosions or should the cladding on the fuel rods get hot enough, it starts to break down, producing hydrogen gas from the water and such to get you a chemical explosion if it ignites for some reason.
So no, nuclear plats will not ever produce a thermal nuclear (or just plain nuclear) explosion...It's physically impossible.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101