CAFE FILIBUSTER

When the Senate failed to produce 60 votes to end a filibuster, supporters of increasing the average fuel economy for automobiles had to give up on the idea of reaching 40 mpg within the next decade. To get an idea of how little progress has been made on fuel standards since then, consider that the filibuster occurred in 1991 and that a proposal this week to again move the industry to the 40-mpg standard was considered too radical by the industry’s apologists in Congress. In effect, that filibuster has continued for 11 years while the reasons for leaving the old standard in place have collapsed, one by one, and the reasons for raising it have become more obvious.

The primary arguments for opposing increases in the corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) are that it results in unsafe cars, it is unfair to domestic manufacturers and that the standards don’t reduce U.S. dependency on foreign oil. The safety question is the toughest because there are several studies that show, on average, smaller vehicles can be less safe than larger ones. The industry mentions these whenever possible and usually describes an estimated number of deaths in the smaller cars per mile of improved performance. But the lobbyists, understandably, do not also mention other studies that, for instance, conclude, SUVs have higher vehicle-fatality rates, are more likely to roll over and have worse head-on crash ratings than passenger cars. Certainly they don’t talk about the falling overall fatality rates due to more important innovations than sheer size – air bags, better safety belts, improved fuel systems, mandatory recalls, side-impact protection and increased roof-strength standards. Perhaps they don’t mention them because the industry that is so concerned with your safety, at one time or another, opposed all these improvements.

On the unfairness question, Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan says CAFE “has a discriminatory impact on the domestic producer because of the way in which their fleets happened to be designed historically.” That is, because the U.S. industry made bigger vehicles before the 1970s, when fuel standards were first applied, the producers can’t be expected to have noticed that smaller cars use less gas than larger cars and do anything about it in a mere 25 years, though the domestic industry did have enough time to create an entirely new class of vehicle, the SUV, during that period. In truth, with people like Sen. Levin around, it hasn’t had to build more smaller cars, but this is hardly an excuse.

On the question of CAFE not reducing dependence on foreign oil: Sure, the United States is even slightly more dependent now than it was 20 or so years ago because everyone drives so many more miles now and because – wouldn’t you know it? – gas-mileage standards haven’t been improved since the 1980s. Dependence went down, by the way, when the standards took effect but before the amount of driving had dramatically increased.

Besides reducing that dependence so that OPEC’s next production cutback doesn’t send prices over $2 a gallon at the pump, cutting fuel emissions by improving efficiency is the single most important step the country can take to reducing the effect of climate change. The fight against moving CAFE standards coincided with science’s steep learning curve about global warming, but the federal government now accepts the idea that man-made pollutants are changing the climate. Passenger vehicles in the United States account for 20 percent of the nation’s total carbon dioxide emissions; raising the CAFE standard to 40 mpg by 2012 would avert 345 million tons of carbon dioxide and some 400 million pounds of smog-forming pollutants.

Maine Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, stalwarts in the effort to raise CAFE standards, are once again supportive of higher standards. The trick will be getting a substantial bill out of the Commerce Committee, which is considering the issue this week.

After a decade of no progress on this important issue, nothing timid will do.