California’s Fighting for Clean Air. Who’s Trump Fighting For?
(Bloomberg Opinion) -- The Trump administration must really hate clean air. Or California. Or both.
Its years-long battle with the Golden State took a turn this week when President Donald Trump announced he would stop letting California set its own emission standards. It was an unprecedented move, and one that could doom national rules supported by environmentalists, the auto industry and consumer advocates alike.
First, some context. The federal government has let California set its own air-quality rules for decades, as long as they’re at least as strict as national standards. More than a dozen states representing about a third of the U.S. auto market follow its lead, so automakers have treated it as the de facto national benchmark. But car companies have long worried about being caught between two sets of regulators. So under President Barack Obama, automakers, the federal government and California regulators worked together to create new fuel-economy and emissions rules. With industry buy-in, they established stronger standards.
It’s this consensus the Trump administration plans to squash.
Rolling back the Obama-era standards would mean burning an additional half a million barrels of oil a day — as much as some smaller OPEC countries produce. It would pump an extra 6 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the air while the affected cars are on the road — the same as running 1,300 coal-fired power plants for a year — and raise emissions of lung-damaging sulfur dioxide by 71,000 metric tons. One research firm estimates the extra emissions released could be larger than that of the world’s 70 smallest countries combined.
The administration says the rollback would make cars cheaper and safer, but these claims are based on analysis scientists have called “misleading,” and “at odds with basic economic theory and empirical studies.” Current and former staff at the Environmental Protection Agency have raised similar concerns.
Carmakers, too, would lose. The industry has been urging the administration to cooperate with California. This summer, 17 companies signed an open letter calling for Trump to think again. More recently, four struck a deal directly with the state. Rolling back the Obama-era standards would penalize investments they’ve already made and put jobs at risk. What the companies want is regulatory consistency, not endless legal battles.
But that’s what they’re facing. Revoking the waiver is legally dubious, and California has already promised a court challenge. Democrats in Congress say they’ll fight back — perhaps by adding a provision to a budget measure. Environmental groups are also planning legal action.
They’re right to push back. This policy is so harmful to so many, and so widely opposed, that one can only wonder: Who does the president think he’s fighting for?
Editorials are written by the Bloomberg Opinion editorial board.
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