Senate on Fuel Economy Standards

Published on Friday, August 1, 2003 by the Boston Globe
Politics Beats Science in Senate
by Derrick Z. Jackson

IN THE LATEST sound science seance, we take you to Washington, where senators, cringing under the spell of Exxon-Mobil and Ford, again refused to raise fuel economy standards to fight global warming.

''This is not the place, on the Senate floor, to make a complex decision that should involve a whole host of factors,'' said Democrat Carl Levin of Michigan.

''You tell this rancher or farmer that he'll need to get a golf cart with a little wagon to carry one bale of hay at a time,'' said Republican Christopher Bond of Missouri.

Saying that global warming is a myth fabricated by ''environmental extremists,'' Republican James Inhofe of Oklahoma said, ''Do you want to engage in something that is going to totally destroy the economy based on something that is a hoax perpetrated on the American people?''

This week the Senate, in a bipartisan alliance of Republicans bought off by oil interests and Democrats in bed with auto and labor interests, rejected 65-32 an amendment by Democrat Richard Durbin of Illinois that would have required automakers to raise average fuel economy for cars from 27.5 m.p.g. to 40 m.p.g. by 2015.

Instead, the Senate voted, 66-30, for a measure cosponsored by Bond and Levin to leave fuel economy in the hands of the Transportation Department and force the department to somehow compute job losses into any increases in fuel economy standards. Bond said this ''assures that future standards are based on sound science'' rather than ''a politically arbitrary figure.''

Here are the real figures that make for arbitrary politics. In his 1998 election and the 2000 election cycle, Bond received a combined $600,000 from energy interests, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. In his 2002 election, Levin received nearly $100,000 from the big three of Detroit's auto industry - Daimler-Chrysler, General Motors, and Ford - and nearly $58,000 from transportation unions. In his 2002 election, Inhofe's biggest industry contributions came from the oil and gas sector, $285,000.

With cash like that, it may never matter to those senators that the ''sound science'' has been in for a long time. Global warming is real, and car exhaust contributes significantly to it. Yet last month the White House deleted the portions of a draft report by the Environmental Protection Agency that referred to studies fingering car exhaust and industrial pollution as culprits. This is after a study commissioned by Bush himself said, ''Global warming could well have serious adverse societal and ecological impacts by the end of this century.''

Bush has obviously figured that since the end of this century is another 97 years off and his presidency has, at most, 51/2 years to go, there is no need to heed the warnings. All we get is the Capitol Hill seance. Back in 1990, the first President Bush claimed he was searching for ''sound science and an open mind to policy options.'' In 1992, a White House spokesman said Bush was still searching for ''sound science'' that was distinguished from environmental ''mysticism.''

In 2001, George W. Bush, despite a decade more of alarming studies in scientific journals, pulled out of the Kyoto global warming treaty and reversed his pledge to cut back on greenhouse gas emissions. He said he would wait until ''we can make a decision based upon sound science.'' Once he got the sound science, he said hear no science, see no science, delete all science.

Now Bond is mumbling about ''sound science'' as Levin and Inhofe raise the extremist specter of mass unemployment. Turning over responsibility for fuel economy to the Transportation Department is just as good as turning it over to Exxon-Mobil and Ford. Last winter, Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta announced a tiny increase in minimum fuel standards for sport utility vehicles and light trucks, from 20.7 m.p.g. to 22.2 m.p.g. by 2007. Fuel economy dropped even as he spoke. Two months ago, the government announced that the nation's average fuel economy fell from 22.1 m.p.g. in 1988 to 20.8 today.

The Senate vote to delay action on cars came on the same day that the American Geophysical Union's Journal of Geophysical Research reported the first evidence that global cooperation on the atmosphere does matter. Researchers found a slowing of the destruction of the ozone layer that protects us from ultraviolet rays. They said the slowing coincides with the reductions in chlorofluorocarbons from spray cans, refrigerators and air conditioning that started in 1989 as a result of an international treaty.

''This is proof that the treaty is working,'' said lead researcher Michael Newchurch of the University of Alabama-Huntsville.

On gas guzzling cars, Bush and senators still wait for proof. They sit in a huddle at the seance, waiting for the next instruction from Exxon-Mobil and Ford. The message will not contain sound science. It will be another hoax.