The Environmental Protection Agency announced Monday that all new cars that aren’t electric must average 55 miles per gallon by 2026.
This amounts to a Great Leap Forward of almost 20 miles per gallon from the currently ordered 36 miles per gallon that all new cars must achieve, else their manufacturers be punished for making them via “gas guzzler” fines applied to them.
Which are then passed on to the people who buy them. Which makes it progressively more difficult to afford them.
That being the point of the fines, you understand.
The Biden administration considers it their right and duty to punish you for buying the car you want if it doesn’t do what they like.
The free market being an intolerable affront to them. Can’t have supply and demand determined by … supply and demand. That would be even worse a thing than free association.
The administration will say they are “saving you money on gas” via their “rules.” Which is true in the same way that “ruling” you must live in a small apartment in the city “saves” you the bother of having to cut a lawn. They do not say anything about the cost of the apartment — including the diminishment of your personal space — and your control over it.
Nor, of course, do they say anything about using “rules” to make you pay more for what you don’t want. An affront which brings us to the following fact:
Right now, only two new (2022 model year) cars meet the new “rule” — just barely. They are the Toyota Prius and the Hyundai Ioniq.
Both are partially electric cars (i.e., hybrids) and also small cars designed to be primarily economical cars. They are not bad cars. Indeed, they have their merits — chief among them their ability to average about 55 miles per gallon. But they are not cars most people want — or else you’d already see most people driving them.
Ledyard King USA TODAY WASHINGTON – The mammoth spending bill Congress approved Dec.21 to curb the spiraling pandemic and prevent a government shutdown carries another description: a substantial step to confront climate change.
Environmental advocates are touting the $2.3trillion bill as a potential game-changer thanks to tax breaks for renewable energy sources, initiatives to promote carbon capture storage and a significant phasedown of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) that are a key culprit to the planet’s warming.
In addition, the measure not only nixes Trump administration’s proposed deep cuts of federal climate science programs but adds millions to those programs for 2021.
‘Passage of this bill represents real forward progress on climate change and clean energy.’ said Lindsey Griffith, federal policy director at the Clean Air Task Force, who calls the package ‘the most significant U.S. federal climate legislation ever.’
While the sweeping bill has grabbed headlines for the billions it provides in direct payments to millions of Americans and its extension of a forgivable loan program for small businesses crippled by the pandemic, policy provisions that attempt to halt carbon missions that contribute to climate change could prove far more lasting. Among the most heralded is a bipartisan move to significantly curb the use of HFCs found in refrigeration, air-conditioning, building insulation and fire extinguishing systems. The provision requires the Environmental Protection Agency to implement an 85% phasedown of the production and consumption so they reach approximately 15% of their 2011-2013 average annual levels by 2036.
The phasedown, part of an international effort to reduce harmful emissions, is projected to prevent the planet from warming half a degree Celsius over the coming decades, though some scientific studies say the Earth may be on an irreversible course to a warming planet and the environmental damage that will result.
‘It is imperative that we take swift action on climate change if we’re going to have any chance of avoiding its worst impacts,’ said Matt Casale, director of U.S. Public Interest Research Group’s Environment Campaigns. ‘Phasing out HFCs – known as ‘super greenhouse gases’ – will bring significant climate relief relatively quickly.’
Other provisions include:
Expansion of carbon capture technology and deployment. Under the process, carbon emissions produced by power plants and other heavy industry are contained and injected deep into the ground where saline rock formations can store the gas for centuries.
Reauthorization of an expiring program that provides industry with financial incentives to replace aging diesel engines with less polluting ones.
Extension and expansion of tax credits for clean energy, including wind, and a new incentive that encourages newly built power plants to be more efficient and cleaner.
Requirements that natural gas facilities deploy the latest technology to prevent, detect and address dangerous methane leaks, a significant contributor to climate change.
Supporters of the legislation say the steps will not only help the planet but expand a clean energy economy that hasn’t always gotten as much support from Washington as they would like.
‘We can ensure American workers lead the national transition to a clean economy,’ said Delaware Sen. Tom Carper, the top Democrat on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee who wrote some of the provisions. ‘We can embrace the ingenuity and innovation of American industries while protecting vulnerable communities.’
The measures also had various degrees of support from Republicans representing fossil fuel states, such as Environment and Public Works Chairman John Barrasso, R-Wy., who represents the nation’s largest coal producing state, and James Inhofe, R-Okla., whose state is a leading oil producer. For GOP lawmakers wary that a drastic transformation to clean energy would imperil their local economies, the legislation is a reasonable, incentive-driven approach.
Efforts to address climate change at the federal level will get another boost in less than a month when Joe Biden is inaugurated as the nation’s 46th president. The former vice president, who has called climate change ‘an existential threat to the health of our planet and to our very survival,’ has made it a focal point of his incoming administration.
President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly questioned his own administration’s climate science, has signaled he might veto the massive bill after criticizing it for not providing Americans with bigger payments for families hurt by the pandemic and because it includes billions in foreign aid. Even so, the measure has enough support to override a presidential veto.
The $2.3 trillion spending bill has a provision that extends and expands tax credits for clean energy, including wind.AP file
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