The Obama administration and vehicle emission standards.

I am quite proud of the fact that California leads the nation in stringent laws regarding vehicle emissions. Of course we have the worst air of any state in our nation. When BushCo tried to blow off Cali’s newest set of regulations in 2007, Cali and 12 other states took it to the courts and won the right to set their own vehicle emissions standards. The EPA had always, prior to BushCo, allowed us to set our own standards, much to the chagrin of the auto manufacturing industry. The industry has a long history of fighting any changes to vehicle emission and fuel standard policies within the state of California.

Then Obama came into the oval office and immediately changed the EPA rules to make it easier for states to set their own emission levels and fuel-efficiency standards.

Yesterday, he announced a national change to ‘the rules’. From a news account of the announcement:

The standards, which still require final approval from the Environmental Protection Agency and the Transportation Department, would force carmakers to reduce carbon dioxide and other emissions in new cars and trucks by 30 percent and build vehicles that average 35.5 miles per gallon.

The changes would take effect in 2012 and would be fully implemented by 2016.

The length of time to get this ball rolling bothers me, but it is what it is..a start in the right direction. The changes will also jack up the cost of new vehicles by as much as $1300 but it will save 1.8 billion barrels of oil from being used by Americans according to administration officials. The changes will also lead to a 30% reduction in carbon dioxide and other emissions by 2016.

An LA Times writeup on the automakers acceptance of these changes is interesting in that it points out how hard Obama had to wrangle and fight the auto industry to go along with his plan. I feel fairly confident that part of the reason they accepted it is because of the bailout money handed over to two of the Big Three american automakers. In the end, 10 automakers accepted the changes.

Salon has a piece up about the changes and what they entail. It’s also a small historical perspective on the electric car and how the auto industry has fucked us on this front time and time again. A small blurb:

The buzz is intoxicating. Yet for 100 years the electric car has shimmered on the horizon, like a mirage, always fleetingly out of reach. Today, even with advances in battery technology, as the major automakers unveil their forthcoming models, they’re still hedging their bets that the internal combustion engine’s glory days aren’t over.

“The technology is always down the road; the better battery is always in the future,” says Michael Schiffer, an anthropology professor at the University of Arizona, and author of “Taking Charge: The Electric Automobile in America.” “People have been promising better batteries for over a century.” Indeed, in 1909, a magazine advertisement for Baker Electric Vehicles touted the revolutionary new cars as “the Aristocrats of Motordom,” which would go “100 Miles on One Charge of the Batteries.” A century later, in 2009, the Mini Cooper’s electric cousin the Mini E, now being leased in a pilot program to 450 drivers in New York, New Jersey and California, promises to go — you guessed it! — over 100 miles.

The auto industry will not go willingly into the future, take it to the bank. They might of all been standing with Obama smiling like the cat that ate the canary..but believe me..they are pissed.

But you know what? Fuck the Auto Industry. Fuck em hard. GM had a great little electric car called the EV-1. They crushed every single one of those cars into oblivion. Folks that owned an EV-1 and who now drive a Prius say the Prius is a step backward when compared to the EV-1. From the Salon article:

“It’s great to see a lot of electric cars are in the works now, but it’s hard to get excited about the Volt because G.M. had a great electric car, and they didn’t stand by it, they didn’t promote it,” says Spertus. “Why should I expect them to do anything different?” After G.M. took Spertus’ EV1 away, it charged her several thousand dollars for dents in it, despite the fact it was headed to the great auto-body shop in the sky.

Today Spertus, who is now working at Google, while taking a leave from Mills, drives a Toyota Prius, which she calls a “real step backward” from the EV1, since it’s only partially electric. “An American car company had a fantastic lead and threw it away,” she says.

That’s not only the view of one disgruntled car driver. Rick Wagoner, former CEO of G.M., fired by Obama in March, has said that his worst decision as CEO was “axing the EV1 electric-car program and not putting the right resources into hybrids.” Says Kirsch: “They should have taken the EV1 and turned it into the Volt 10 years ago. It’s 10 years late and $10 billion short.”

So I am happy but also not completely sold on the auto industry going along with all this ‘change’. They still have their lawsuit in the courts against Cali’s vehicle standards. They have refused to kill that suit up until now. Ford has said recently that the Obama Plan will kill them. From the LAT article:

A senior Ford executive said the company had run the numbers again and concluded it might not survive if it accepted the deal. If Ford pulled out, it would mean a major setback for two of President Obama’s signature goals — combating global warming and reducing the nation’s appetite for foreign oil.

*snip*

Yet the near-collapse of the effort was a dramatic reminder of how hard it can be to break through years of stalemate and build a consensus for action on a problem that has pitted some of the country’s most powerful interests against each other.

So you will forgive me if my happiness is tempered by the knowledge that the automakers are always full of shit and always looking out for their bottom line. I know that somewhere down the road they will balk at some if not all of these changes. History bears this out. Just look at what GM did to the EV-1 and how hard people fought to keep those great little electric cars…all to no avail..as the people lost that fight.

I just hope we don’t lose this time. I want cleaner air and better mileage. I am willing to pay for those things even though I am on a fixed income. I hope everyone gets onboard with this.

But the pessimist in me says-Don’t get excited yet woman..there is plenty of time for this plan to fail. 2016 is way down the friggin road..way down.

Crossposted at my personal rant home, Its my Right to be Left of the Center.

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What’s Obama done in his first week? Well, lemme tell ya..

He hasn’t been sitting on his hands reading polls, he hasn’t been giving us empty speeches or downplaying the economic crisis either. In his first week, Obama has done the following, per Bill Moyers Journal:

In his first full day in office, President Barack Obama enacted two executive orders dealing with government openness and ethics. The NEW YORK TIMES suggested that, like many presidents before him, President Obama carefully chose these orders to send a message about his priorities as President.
*snip*
In one of his first executive orders, President Obama revoked the use of executive privilige as a means for former presidents and their heirs to keep documents from becoming public. In a separate memorandum President Obama undid a post-9/11 directive from the Bush administration that had encouraged federal agencies to deny Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. Additionally, President Obama signed a memorandum outlining his administration’s committment to open and transparent government.

Thankfully, Obama’s administration also ordered a shut down to any of Bush’s midnight regulations that haven’t been finalized yet.

Obama has also signed E.O’s that stop torture, close Gitmo, and will now allow the federal government to fund family planning clinics outside the U.S. that counsel on abortion.

It’s was a busy week for our Commander-in-Chief. And I welcome that with a smile on my face and a song in my heart.

The beginning of a new week and he is still making changes. Today, he signed an Executive Order reversing Bush’s fuckery on allowing states to set their own EPA standards. As a Cali native and current resident of one of the smoggiest shitholes in the state, that makes me very happy.

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Bushs toxic legacy-weakening the EPA

As his administration winds down, George Bush is still turning the EPA into a department without teeth thereby allowing American’s to suffer and die because of it. As recently as mid-October the Bush Administration has toned down regulations designed to protect American’s from the deadly results of lead poisoning.

This isn’t about lead, its about the biggest polluter in our government, the Pentagon, and chemicals used for decades on military bases. Chemicals that are known to cause illness, cancer and death, that were not disposed of correctly and now Americans living near Kelly Air Force Base, just as one example, are paying the consequences of those actions.

It’s about how the Bush Administration is attempting to cover it all up by fucking with how and why the EPA collects data, uses it and reports it.

BushCo has lowered the bar when it comes to toxic waste. This should be his true legacy in my humble yet vocal opinion. From a Salon.com article:

Beneath the Alvarados’ house and those of their neighbors are shallow pools of groundwater that are polluted with tetrachloroethylene, or PCE, a chemical associated with cancer, liver and kidney disease. Before the Kelly base closed in 2001, mechanics used PCE to degrease parts on airplanes and fighter jets. For decades, they chronically dumped the solvent into poorly sealed or unsealed waste pits on the base, where it seeped underground, forming a plume that sprawls over four square miles under 23,000 homes and businesses. Locals refer to the area as “the toxic triangle.”

On cool or rainy days, when the Alvarados close the windows and shut off the air conditioning, a sweet chemical smell floods the house. When they eat dinner during these times, says Robert, 66, it’s like tasting something acrid. “We drink bottled water but there’s nothing we can do about the air except go outside and wait,” says Lupe, 64.

Robert, a handsome man with almond skin, limps across his cramped living room with a black metal cane. He shows me a letter that recently arrived from the local hospital, congratulating him; he’d qualified for a kidney transplant. A few years ago he suffered a brain aneurysm, causing him to become nearly blind. His wife and one of his daughters both have battled thyroid cancer. “We know at least 15 people on this street alone who have some sort of cancer,” says Robert, a former labor relations employee at Delta Air Lines. “We call ourselves the living dead.”

In the Alvarados’ front yard, a purple cross sticks out of a cluster of banana trees. The crosses, distributed by a local community group, punctuate front yards throughout the neighborhood. They mark homes where people are battling cancer or other illnesses, an estimated 25 percent of households, according to local activists.

Surveys conducted by the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry have found elevated levels of kidney, liver and cervical cancer, leukemia and low birth weights in the neighborhoods that surround Kelly Air Force Base. A survey by the University of Texas found that 91 percent of adults in the area experienced multiple illnesses, including chronic sinus infections, nausea, heart and lung disease. Based on these studies, the area qualifies as a cancer cluster (with a higher rate of terminal illness, per capita, than areas of a similar size), says Wilma Subra, a chemist and environmental health activist based in Louisiana, who has consulted with Kelly community activists.

Although it has conducted limited testing, the EPA acknowledges that it’s possible for PCE vapor to rise from groundwater into people’s living rooms and kitchens. Yet it says the Alvarados and their neighbors have nothing to fear. Based on EPA air quality tests inside five area homes, the nation’s environmental guardian claims that it’s safe for residents to live above the plume for the next 40 to 100 years, or the amount of time it will take for the chemicals to naturally dissipate.

No one in the government has studied PCE for over a fucking decade. Yet they have the audacity to say its not ‘that’ harmful to humans and other living things. Read the quote below from a scientist at the EPA:

“It feels like Stalin-era Russia, like the administration set themselves up to decide what’s allowable science and what isn’t,” says a high-ranking staff scientist at the EPA, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “Until the recent economic crash, this has been such an anti-regulatory administration. One of the ways to undermine regulations is to undermine the science behind them. It’s absolutely shocking what’s going on.”

Public health officials say this attempt to derail the scientific evaluation of toxins is one of the most damning legacies of the Bush administration. In late September, the Government Accountability Office issued a scathing critique of the EPA’s new toxic-assessment procedures. It concluded that the secretive procedures compromise scientific credibility and sacrifice the public’s trust in government. Despite such hefty criticism, public officials fear that because the new procedures have been instituted at the EPA so far below the public radar, their harmful impact will survive long after Bush leaves office. It will take a bold and expedient move by Barack Obama or the next Congress to curtail the influence of the Pentagon and other government agencies on the EPA.

Obama needs to do lots of things when he takes office. Restaffing the EPA is hopefully high on his list..people’s lives depend on it.

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priceless

human life to some means so very little- and some humans mean nothing at all to these ‘people’

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good to know

that billions of dollars annually are wasted on federal employee’s salaries.  they are obviously getting paid with benefits for doing nothing.

epa not interested in keeping drinking water clean- due to the government mucking it up in the first place

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Oh hell yeah….

The firing of the USA Attorneys was the downfall of Alberto Gonzo Gonzales Now, the asshole that heads the EPA is looking the fool with the dismissal of Mary Gade, regional administrator of U.S. EPA Region 5 which is based in Chi-town. This woman has been fighting Dow Chemical for years m’dear reader..and she gets kicked to the curb by the Head of the EPA, that wonderful individual named EPA administrator Stephen Johnson. Johnson is a prick of mythic proportions:

Gade told the Tribune she resigned after two aides to national EPA administrator Stephen Johnson took away her powers as regional administrator and told her to quit or be fired by June 1.

You son of a bitch. Can you actually be so stupid as to think no one will notice this bullshittery? Are you that fucking retarded?

Gade has taken on Dow forevah! She has fought the good fight against one of the the major top five polluters and murderous thugs in the world. And this is how the Bush Administration rewards her. Ass-friggin-holes. Remember Bhopal people…

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BushCo says F**k no to CA emission standards

BushCo said it actually to 17 states in all. This little Caesar wants all the control, all of the time it seems. Excuse me whilst I toss my cookies over this latest, fresh hell perpetrated by the Bush Cartel. From the NYT article:

The Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday denied California and 16 other states the right to set their own standards for carbon dioxide emissions from automobiles.

The E.P.A. administrator, Stephen L. Johnson, said the proposed California rules were pre-empted by federal authority and made moot by the energy bill signed into law by President Bush on Wednesday. Mr. Johnson said California had failed to make a compelling case that it needed authority to write its own standards for greenhouse gas emissions from cars and trucks to help curb global warming.

Read more

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