Emission Impossible

Lying to justify policy. Lying to deflect criticism. Lying to denigrate opponents. Lying to accumulate more personal wealth. Hey, you might believe, doesn’t the old adage, “how can you tell if a politician is lying? His/her lips are moving,” apply to just about every politician, appointed or elected, regardless of party? Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. But when some of the most important decisions, regulations and statutes are predicated on completely fabricated “facts,” when the consequences of ignoring physical laws are life altering in a very bad way for most of us, it is time to demand truth and accountability.

The number two poster boy for political fraud (guess who is number one?) these days is the omnidestructive Environmental Protection Agency chief, Scott “gasp, choke” Pruitt, a waster, corruptor extraordinaire and an accomplished destroyer. He spent his life attacking the EPA and its regulations.  Anything that costs business money, even if lives are at stake, is ripped away… and environmental regulations are at the top of his list… and have been most of his adult life.

His recent EPA directives, aimed squarely at California (particularly Southern California that has struggled against smog as long as I can remember) remind me of those old cigarette ads, “three out of four doctors recommend” ads, reaching into a logbook of long-since disproven “facts” to see if he can refloat those falsehoods to a committed base willing to believe just about anything the Trump administration embraces.

The law (Clean Air Act) allows states to adapt more stringent emission standards (measured by fuel consumption) absent a strong public safety reason to the contrary. So to reverse those growing mileage requirements, which are particularly strict in California, Polluter-in-chief Pruitt has dredged up arguments from an era when crash-worthiness was measured not by high-tech safety engineering but solely by bulk and size.

Bigger cars survived because they were, er, bigger. Smaller cars failed because they were, er, smaller. Nothing more. That engines are now designed to break away under the passenger compartment not into it, that air bags deploy differently now, and the cage around the passengers is engineered to withstand crashes… well we don’t need to examine that, because “everybody knows” bigger is better and safer. Not exactly. Not to mention that engine efficiency can apply even to larger cars. Let’s face it, those big SUVs are among America’s favorite vehicles, and mileage numbers even for those “larger” vehicles are pretty impressive.

“It is an argument long advanced by Pruitt’s allies at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a group funded by the network of donors led by billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch. The institute and other Koch-funded groups recently sent Pruitt a letter, pushing him to revoke the waiver allowing California to set its own rules. They accused the state of pursuing a radical national agenda against gas-powered vehicles.

“‘In our view, CAFE has always threatened lives,’ said Sam Kazman, general counsel at the institute, using the acronym for the federal rules, called corporate average fuel economy standards. He accuses federal agencies of covering up the death toll that the institute says the downsizing of the fleet has created, and points to findings by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety that occupants of larger, heavier vehicles are most likely to survive a crash.

“The problem the Trump administration confronts in embracing that argument: The fuel economy rules don’t necessarily push consumers into smaller, less-safe cars.

‘Manufacturers don’t comply with these rules by making more small vehicles, said Adrian Lund, who recently retired as president of the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. Rolling back the rules, Lund said, would not make vehicles’ occupants safer.

“The standards require that every car become more fuel-efficient. But they do not dictate which cars hit showroom floors. Automakers can continue their trend of selling more SUVs.” Los Angeles Times, April 22^nd. Californians, and the residents of any other states who care, have a statutory right to determine the quality of the air their residents breathe. Lies to support a lower quality of the very air we breathe kill people, and it’s time to make the bad man stop. There is an election coming up. Use your vote wisely!

I’m Peter Dekom, and I am completely aghast at an anti-fact government very openingly willing to degrade the quality of the very air I breathe to make more money for those who do not need it!!!