They'll call it an assault on environmental protection. Pressure groups and their friends in politics and the media will complain that the Environmental Protection Agency has advanced its unholy campaign against regulation yet again.
What EPA in fact will do when it and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) ease vehicle fuel-efficiency standards is to accommodate excesses of the Obama administration to economic reality. This has occurred frequently in the yearling administration of President Donald Trump. EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, to his credit, seems unfazed by the by the condemnation his repairs have provoked.
Change coming
At this writing, details had not been disclosed about changes to Obama-era standards for vehicle greenhouse gas emissions and corporate average fuel economy (CAFE). An EPA spokeswoman had confirmed that revisions were sent to the White House Office of Management and Budget, the last step before publication. And an official of NHTSA, which administers the program with EPA, had told the Senate Committee on Commerce, Space, and Technology that a proposal would be made about Apr. 1.
For the oil and gas industry, this is mildly welcome news. For American motorists, it represents strong economic relief. And for the environment, it's hardly the catastrophe many will call it.
Characteristically, the Obama administration opted for maximum regulation when a review of its vehicle-mileage targets indicated problems with practicability. In 2012, the EPA and NHTSA had toughened requirements for new light-duty vehicles through 2025 under a complex system regulating emissions and mileage together through a standard expressed as miles per gallon. Because requirements can cover no more than 5 years, standards for later years were estimates, subject to a midterm evaluation.
That evaluation, conducted in 2016, revealed problems. Motorists favored heavier vehicles. While automakers had hoped to balance fleet emissions with sales of electric vehicles and hybrids, market patterns in mid-2016 made clear that aggressive targets wouldn't be met. Vehicle manufacturers sought relaxation of the 2022-25 standards. In its final weeks, the Obama administration declined. In early weeks of the Trump administration, automakers requested that the scheduled toughening of standards not be made. Trump's EPA and NHTSA now seem ready to oblige.
Before howling begins from the environmentalist left, a few observations are in order.
Congress authorized CAFE standards to address fuel supply, not environmental protection. Emissions of greenhouse gases and their effect on globally averaged temperature were not matters of concern in 1975, when lawmakers passed the Energy Policy and Conservation Act in response to the Arab oil embargo of 1973-74. Embracing conventional wisdom of the day, lawmakers thought US production of crude oil would irreversibly decline, consumption of gasoline would strongly increase, prices of oil prices would relentlessly climb, and dependency on imported oil would perpetually grow. Conventional wisdom of the mid-1970s was thoroughly wrong.
More by political fusion than by law, oil supply gave way to air emissions, especially greenhouse gases, as the dominant reason to regulate vehicle fuel mileage. This is nothing to regret. Limiting emissions is desirable, and improving vehicle fuel mileage is one way to go about it. But the value of limiting emissions should be weighed against costs of the effort and related to the diminished value of improving vehicle fuel mileage to address vanishing challenges of oil supply.
Energy mistakes
In 2012, of course, the EPA and NHTSA would have none of that. The regulatory approach then was to cut the use of fossil energy however possible, wherever possible, regardless of cost, no matter how little the effort might influence global temperature. Climate myopia seduced the Obama administration into a series of appalling energy mistakes, from which Pruitt and others in the Trump administration are now rescuing consumers and the economy.
The Obama team blissfully regulated to raise the costs of energy forms it disliked and of vehicles Americans want but that regulators wished them not to buy. Popular reaction against imperiousness of this type helps explain why Trump is president.