Paint it Green: Automakers Adjust Their Climate Argument

The auto industry is still strongly opposed to granting California a waiver to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from cars and trucks (which essentially means regulating fuel economy), but now it is approaching the matter from a distinctly green point of view.

The issue has deadline urgency, because, after President Obama ordered that the waiver issue be reopened, Congress gave the EPA until June 30 to accept or reject the waiver.

The Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers (AAM), representing 11 carmakers, said in written arguments released April 6 that the group is "committed to continuously improving fuel economy and thereby reducing greenhouse gas emissions. We are also committed to developing and implementing policies that enable the introduction of new technologies needed to support sustainable mobility."

So far, so green. But AAM goes on to urge that the waiver be denied (an unlikely outcome) because "a waiver at this late date [with automakers already producing many 2010 model cars] could only add to the market volatility that is causing automakers to suffer unprecedented losses." Some auto executives are lamenting that the California law would cost them many billions of dollars.

After rebuffs in three jurisdictions, AAM is vigorously fighting California's proposed greenhouse standards in court appeals, after rebuffs in three jurisdictions. Steve Hinchman, a lawyer at the Boston-based Conservation Law Foundation in Boston (one of four environmental intervenors in the case) rejects the automakers' position and says that states have "long-established" authority under the federal Clean Air Act to demand clean cars.

AAM's spokesman, Charles Territo, said in a Bnet.com interview that there is no contradiction in its position. "We support an aggressive national standard," he said. "What we've opposed is a state-by-state fuel economy framework that creates compliance difficulties for manufacturers, and confusion and chaos for dealers and consumers."

AAM nods with approval at a recent New York Times editorial that called on President Obama "to establish an aggressive--and unified--national standard for automobile fuel economy that could save consumers money at the pump, reduce oil dependency and greenhouse gases and help make America's car companies (or what's left of them after the present restructuring) more competitive." AAM likes the "unified" part, not the part about the evisceration of the auto industry as we know it.