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The Oil Industry's Covert Campaign To Rewrite American Car Emissions Rules (nytimes.com) 304

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.

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The Oil Industry's Covert Campaign To Rewrite American Car Emissions Rules

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  • by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 13, 2018 @04:05PM (#57799578)

    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.)

    • by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 13, 2018 @04:14PM (#57799632)

      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

    • Root cause (Score:5, Insightful)

      by OrangeTide ( 124937 ) on Thursday December 13, 2018 @04:43PM (#57799854) Homepage Journal

      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

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward

        I think you're being far too selective. Sadly we have a overall culture willing to tell virtually any lie that they think people will believe to get their way. Pro-life nuts will tell you that people are getting abortions for the shear fun of it, Gun control nuts will tell you that your children are in more danger than soldiers in a war zone, "tough on crime" nuts will tell you that everyone who goes to prison is a hardened criminal who will kill you as soon as look at you, etc, etc. We have systemic pr

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by filekutter ( 617285 )
        Capitalism is an economic system that is attempting to insinuate itself into democracy and transform how the country is governed. Period. Capitalism supports the unmitigated accumulation of money. If you insinuate these values into a democratic social system you become a corporate oligarchy. Corporations do not care about people, they care about profits. Period. This is not a system that is good for societies.
  • by djbckr ( 673156 ) on Thursday December 13, 2018 @04:06PM (#57799582)
    You are making a wonderful world for my grandchildren.
    • by Shotgun ( 30919 )

      They aren't the ones buying a driving the cars, or buying the products from China.

  • by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 13, 2018 @04:16PM (#57799640)

    With oil scarcity no longer a concern

    Conveniently omitting to mention pollution and greenhouse gas emissions as remaining concerns.

    • by bobbied ( 2522392 ) on Thursday December 13, 2018 @04:37PM (#57799824)

      With oil scarcity no longer a concern

      Conveniently omitting to mention pollution and greenhouse gas emissions as remaining concerns.

      I would like to point out that this USED to be a question of national security too. Because the nation's infrastructure ran on oil and we used more than we produced, we where at high risk if there where supply disruption, say because of some bad things happening half a world away. So, the initial emission standards and mileage requirements where driven into regulations long before the Climate Change argument was a thing.

      I know a lot of you folks didn't live though the oil embargo's of the 70's, when we got blessed with the 55 MPH speed limits and Jimmy Carter's national regulations that mandated how cold you could set the AC and how hot you could run the heater. I remember waiting in lines to get gas too.

      So environmental concerns where only part of the reason we have the CAFE standards. Some of those reasons don't exist now.

      The question is now that we have one less reason, does that justify relaxing the standards? Maybe, maybe not, but it sure makes it a harder sell to increase the CAFE mileage standards...

      • It's still a matter of national security.

        Nobody buys American cars because they're seen to be unreliable and uneconomic.

        Validating that belief endangers thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of jobs and places America at the mercy of countries the President has seriously upset.

        Yes, that could be considered national security.

    • by mark-t ( 151149 ) <markt.nerdflat@com> on Thursday December 13, 2018 @04:50PM (#57799914) Journal

      Also conveniently ignoring that there are numerous other things on this earth that were once in great abundance that are now notably vastly reduced, or sometimes gone entirely.

      Or do they really think that every creature that was hunted to the brink of extinction, or even wiped out entirely, was never very populous to begin with?

      Or, hell... let's just talk about clean freshwater. Sure there's a lot of it, but that doesn't mean that it's always going to be there if we keep polluting the hell out of the supply that we have.

    • Also the money you shell out at the pump.
  • by Lucas123 ( 935744 ) on Thursday December 13, 2018 @04:20PM (#57799678) Homepage

    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.

    • Be careful what you wish for: Tesla has cut every corner they could with the Model 3 (worker wellbeing, worker safety, fit and finish, repairability and repair affordability), and they still can't make the darn thing at the promised $36.000 price. Which is a high price for a car already. An all-EV future could be a future in you, average middle class person, cannot afford to drive. Which can be fine if you live in New York City or some other densely populated area but not if you live in a rural or exurban a
      • * in you = in which you
      • Actually, the German estimate was a manufacturing cost of $28k total. That doesn't mean it can't go any lower in the future.
      • by dgatwood ( 11270 )

        Be careful what you wish for: Tesla has cut every corner they could with the Model 3 (worker wellbeing, worker safety, fit and finish, repairability and repair affordability), and they still can't make the darn thing at the promised $36.000 price. Which is a high price for a car already. An all-EV future could be a future in you, average middle class person, cannot afford to drive.

        Or a world in which the middle class demand to be paid better.

        The average price of a new car, according to Experian, is $34,000

      • by Jeremi ( 14640 )

        And yet Tesla is selling Model 3s as fast as they can make them, and every other car company is scrambling to follow their lead. It appears Tesla's only mistake (or perhaps it was deliberate?) was to announce a lower price-point than they could immediately sell the product at -- but that doesn't mean they won't ever be able to sell cars at that price.

        Currently most of the cost of an electric car is its battery pack, and battery technology is getting better and cheaper every year. Unless there is some unav

    • Self driving electric cars are going to squish the American car market like a bug on the highway. It'll be like having lots of cheap taxi's everywhere, nobody will need/want to own their own car.
  • by LostMyBeaver ( 1226054 ) on Thursday December 13, 2018 @04:26PM (#57799716)
    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?
  • by foxalopex ( 522681 ) on Thursday December 13, 2018 @04:27PM (#57799736)

    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.

  • Oil scarcity (Score:5, Informative)

    by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Thursday December 13, 2018 @04:38PM (#57799832)

    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.

  • Call me skeptical, but if the automakers had really balked, they'd simply continue moving towards better and tighter emission control standards exactly as if they *had* been legally required to do so, regardless of any legislation that may be permitting them to implement workable solutions at a cheaper financial cost here and now. I know of no law that *requires* cars to pollute a certain minimum amount, after all.
  • Cowards (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Artagel ( 114272 ) on Thursday December 13, 2018 @04:51PM (#57799928) Homepage

    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.

  • Fun fact: if Big Oil hadn't done this, we'd be paying half as much for filling our tanks, and those of us who would have already transitioned to $6000 EVs made in China and Taiwan would be paying between 1/10th and 1/40th as much, plus paying half the maintenance fees.

    You got ripped off big time.

    (caveat: I have invested and owned direct stocks in fossil fuel firms (oil,gas,ethanol,coal,biomass) and in automobile and airplane firms)

  • I mean granted, they both start with the letter E, but other than that they are completely different concepts. Even this lunkhead at NYT should've been able to grasp the difference.

    Yes Trump administration sought to reduce the fuel-efficiency requirements. Yes the oil industry lobbied hard for it, more fuel used by people = more money for them. But this is a fuel EFFICIENCY issue. Not emissions. Emission means air pollution. You can have an inefficient car that gets very low miles per gallon, and yet have a

  • ALL designed to facilitate commerce - except AGW. That bitch be an equal opportunity hottie. AGW will disrupt ALL.

    You and me alone can't stop AGW but sure as hell the collective WE can stop commerce that feeds it. Money matters; its all that matters. Spend unwise, waste your life - waste a planet; Woke, spend wisely, stop AGWcommerce save a planet - save a life.

  • Guardian - George Monbiot. Great article on the puppeteers that rewrite the rules as they wish.
  • A case could be made that the US should restrict exploration and production domestically, as well as keep progressing with auto efficiency standards. The list of oil producers after the US is pretty consistent with a list of our adversaries. Why not use their oil in the present, and leave ours in the ground for the years when oil begins to become more scarce?

    Ideally we would be looking out for the long term well being of the United States of America which is why whether it's Facebook or Marathon Oil, we s

  • When we increased the efficiency of burning coal guess what, we used more. That can be said about a huge number of other things we consume. As we increase the efficiency the usefulness tends to increase significantly faster that the efficiency gain. So we have more efficient engines now, the result has been moving from driving a car to an SUV. Then we drive the SUV even further. If the ICE cars become less efficient then the cost advantage of electric cars will actually increase to the point no one wil

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