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At some point today, the EPA and the Department of Transportation (DOT) will propose a first-ever joint regulation to establish first-ever greenhouse gas (GHG) emission standards for new motor vehicles. The new standards, covering model years 2012-2016, will raise federal fuel economy standards to 35.5 mpg in 2016.

This is considerably more stringent than the standard Congress adopted in the December 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act (EISA), which would boost average fuel economy to 35 mpg by 2020.

This is bad news for three reasons.

New cars will be less safe. The proposed standards will require the average car and light truck to be 40% more fuel efficient by 2016. That’s a very aggressive schedule. To meet it, automakers will have to deploy advanced technologies (such as hybrid engines), but that won’t be enough. They’ll also have to reduce average vehicle size and weight. That, in turn, will at a minimum make the average car less safe than it would otherwise be.

Why? It’s a matter of physics. Heavier cars provide more mass to absorb collision forces, and larger cars provide more space between the occupant and the point of impact. Make a car smaller and lighter, and it will go farther on a gallon of gas (and emit fewer pounds of carbon dioxide per mile), but it will also provide less protection in collisions. The National Research Council estimates that the pre-EISA (27.5 mpg) fuel economy standard contributed to about 2,000 additional fatalities per year.

New cars will be more costly. As an unnamed senior administration official said yesterday in an embargoed press briefing, the EISA fuel economy standard will add $700 to the cost of a new car in 2016. The revised standards will add another $600 to the average sticker price. Yet the anonymous official claimed the new rules will help revive the prostrate auto industry. Yep, increase the average cost of a new car by $1,300, and more people will buy them! 

As my colleague Sam Kazman comments, the federal fuel economy program “kills consumers by reducing vehicle size, and now it may well kill car companies by forcing them to produce cars that consumers don’t want.” 

The GHG standards will start a regulatory chain reaction with potentially devastating economic impacts. The new standards are the regulatory complement to the endangerment proposal EPA issued on April 17. As explained here and here, once EPA and DOT finalize the Fuel economy/GHG emission standards, an estimated 1.2 million previously unregulated buildings and facilities will qualify as ”major stationary sources” of carbon dioxide under the Clean Air Act’s Prevention of Significant Deterioration (PSD) pre-construction permitting program. Thousands of small- to mid-size firms could be compelled to obtain PSD permits in order to build or modify such “major stationary sources” as office buildings, enclosed malls, big box stores, and commercial restaurants.

The PSD  permitting process is costly and time consuming. In 2003, the average permit cost $125,120 and 866 hours  for regulated entities to obtain (not included any technology investments regulated entities had to make). No small business could operate under the PSD administrative burden. A more potent Anti-Stimulus would be hard to imagine.

Cap-and-Trade Is a License to Cheat-and-Steal
Bill O’ Keefe, DC Examiner, 19 May 2009

One of James Bond’s first movies captured attention with the title “License to Kill.” Today, Washington, D.C., is setting the stage to compete with Hollywood in the sensational headlines market. Members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee are in the process of scripting climate change legislation worthy of being titled “License to Cheat and Steal.”

Green Jobs Lead to Pink Slips
William Yeatman, Detroit News, 19 May 2009

Repower America, a green energy advocacy organization founded by Former Vice President and Nobel Laureate Al Gore, is running television advertisements in northern Michigan to pressure U.S. Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Menominee) into supporting the American Clean Energy and Security Act, a major climate bill working through Congress.

Uncle Sam Will Give You and Energy Allowance
Chris Horner, Human Events, 18 May 2009

On Friday, House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Beverly Hills) released the closely-held details of his bill rationing energy use in the name of global warming, the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (ACES).

Is Wind the Next Ethanol?
Ben Lieberman, Heritage.org, 11 May 2009

Repeating past mistakes has long been a part of Washington’s energy policy, but Congress used to wait a while before making the same blunder again. Not anymore. New legislation requiring wind energy closely resembles the ethanol mandate that sparked a backlash just last year.

A stunning survey commissioned by the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association reveals that Americans overwhelmingly oppose expensive energy policies like the American Clean Energy and Security Act, the Waxman-Markey climate change mitigation bill.

You can download a memo on the survey results.

You can also download a graphic representation of the survey.

Below is a brief summary:

• 78% of all respondents saying a $50 increase monthly in utility bills would be a hardship.  A recent MIT study said household costs could exceed $3000 per year, or 5 times as much overall costs the $50 per month/$600 per year would mean.
• 58% of respondents say they are unwilling to pay any more than they currently pay for electricity to combat climate change.
• Respondents are aware that climate change legislation will likely cause their electricity rates to go up.
• In addition, one-half (50%) of the country opposes enacting a carbon tax to fund energy research, which represents an amazing 49-point shift (22% drop in agree; 27% increase in disagree) away from supporting a carbon tax for energy research in 2007.
• Interest in protecting the environment and fighting climate change has dropped from a low priority (8%) in 2007 to receiving virtually no attention (3%) in 2009.

A politically active friend in the Beehive State reports a gleeful mood among colleagues over the apparent pending departure of Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. — a Schwarzeneggar/Crist clone on global warming — because of his selection by President Obama as ambassador to China. His message:

A great day for Utah – how can we ever thank the people of China?!

The $800 billion stimulus package pushed through by Obama has ignited a trade war with Canada, reports the Washington Post. In response to vague “buy American” provisions in the stimulus, “A number of Ontario towns, with a collective population of nearly 500,000, retaliated with measures effectively barring U.S. companies from their municipal contracts — the first shot in a larger campaign that could shut U.S. companies out of billions of dollars worth of Canadian projects.”

A trade war is also underway with Mexico, thanks to a provision in the stimulus package that blocked a measley 97 Mexican truckers from U.S. roads. That minor NAFTA violation “caused Mexico to retaliate with tariffs on 90 goods affecting $2.4 billion in U.S. trade,” destroying 40,000 American jobs.

Obama’s protectionism echoes Herbert Hoover’s protectionism, which helped spawn the Great Depression. President Hoover signed the Smoot-Hawley tariff, which helped turn a recession into the Great Depression by triggering a trade war with other countries.

Unemployment is now even higher than what Obama predicted it would be without the stimulus. The White House now admits that there will be no job growth until 2010. The Congressional Budget Office repeatedly predicted that the stimulus would shrink the economy “in the long run,” but increase it in the short run, i.e., by the next election.

But so little of the stimulus money has gone into sectors of the economy where unemployment is high (like construction and transportation) that it seems to be doing nothing for the economy even in the short run. The $100 billion it pours into education — a sector where unemployment is very low, and where the U.S. also spends more per capita than almost every other country — appears likely to be wasted. Only 5.9 percent of the stimulus will go to transportation, a small amount compared to the amount of money it showers on state governments, which are using it to continue to provide lucrative pension and health benefits for state employees, whose wages continue to rise much faster than private sector workers.

Obama is following in Herbert Hoover’s footsteps on taxes and spending. In the Great Depression, Hoover raised marginal tax rates to 63%, and went on a deficit spending binge. Similarly, Obama has proposed higher marginal tax rates, which will produce another $1.9 trillion in tax increases. One of Obama’s own advisers now says that “the barrage of tax increases proposed in President Barack Obama’s budget could, if enacted by Congress, kill any chance of an early and sustained recovery.” He compares Obama’s tax increases to those that deepened the Great Depression.

Hoover imposed regressive taxes that burdened consumers, like the Revenue Act of 1932. Obama is now doing the same thing through his proposed $2 trillion cap-and-trade carbon tax. Obama privately admitted to the San Francisco Chronicle (which didn’t report it) that under his “plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.” As Obama admitted, that cost would be directly passed “on to consumers” — just the way Herbert Hoover’s 1932 excise tax increase was. Although the tax’s supporters claim it will cut greenhouse gas emissions, it may perversely increase them and also result in dirtier air. It is also chock full of corporate welfare, regional favoritism, political pay-offs, and give-aways to special interests.

Harvard economist Martin Feldstein, who has advised Obama, warns that “the barrage of tax increases proposed in President Barack Obama’s budget could, if enacted by Congress, kill any chance of an early and sustained recovery.” He compares Obama’s tax increases to the ones that contributed to the Great Depression and the “Lost Decade” of economic stagnation and decay in Japan.

Feldstein, who serves on Obama’s economic advisory board, has also “warned of serious inflation and higher taxes down the road” as a result of Obama’s policies.

Feldstein singles out for criticism Obama’s proposed global-warming tax. “Mr. Obama’s biggest proposed tax increase is the cap-and-trade system of requiring businesses to buy carbon dioxide emission permits. . .CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf testified before the Senate Finance Committee on May 7 that the cap-and-trade price increases . . . would cost the average household roughly $1,600 a year, ranging from $700 in the lowest-income quintile to $2,200 in the highest-income quintile.”

That’s a highly regressive tax increase, since lowest-income earners don’t make a third of what highest-income earners make, but they would incur a third as much cost. It’s regressive in the same way as the 1932 excise tax increase by Herbert Hoover that deepened the misery of the Great Depression.

During the Great Depression, Herbert Hoover damaged the economy, and impoverished the American people, with costly, artificial attempts to stimulate the economy through increased government spending, financed by heavy taxes like the Revenue Act of 1932.

Obama earlier admitted that “under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.” As Obama admitted, that cost would be directly passed “on to consumers” — just the way Herbert Hoover’s regressive excise taxes were in 1932. Although the tax’s supporters claim it will cut greenhouse gas emissions, it may perversely increase them and also result in dirtier air.

In reality, Obama’s proposed “cap-and-trade” tax is likely to raise $2 trillion over the next decade, far more than even Feldstein anticipates. That’s far more than the $646 billion the Administration earlier estimated — amounting to at least $3,100 per family per year. And that figure may be dwarfed by the amount of money siphoned from consumers to well-connected corporations that have learned how to game “cap-and-trade” schemes.

In the Great Depression, President Herbert Hoover raised marginal tax rates to 63%, and went on a deficit spending binge. Similarly, Obama has proposed higher marginal tax rates, which will produce another $1.9 trillion in tax increases.

In spite of its massive size, Obama’s carbon tax won’t begin to pay for all his spending increases, such as a budget that will generate $4.8 trillion in increased deficits, Obama’s trillion-dollar toxic-asset program, and his $800 billion, economy-shrinking “stimulus” package, all of which contradict Obama’s campaign pledge of a “net spending cut.”

These tax increases are breaches of Obama’s campaign promise not to raise taxes on people making less than $250,000 a year, which he earlier broke by signing into law the regressive SCHIP excise tax increase.

It’s part of a long line of broken promises, such as Obama’s pledge to enact a “net spending cut,” which he discarded by offering mind-bogglingly large budgets that will explode the national debt through $9.3 trillion in massively increased deficit spending.

The National Wildlife Federation Action Fund, the “grassroots lobbying arm” of NWF (you know, they only educate), announced last week that “hunters and anglers” (as though NWFAF represents that unified group) are running ads in Democrat-held swing districts (PDF) of three congressmen ahead of an upcoming expected vote on the Waxman-Markey cap-and-energy-tax legislation:

“Hunters and anglers want fast action to safeguard natural resources and reduce the effects of climate change in the places where they fish and hunt – places they want to protect for their children and grandchildren,” said Sue Brown, executive director of the National Wildlife Federation Action Fund. “The ads send a clear message that the nation’s sportsmen and women want a strong bill from the committee that will reduce global warming pollution and invest in our natural resources.”

The sportsmen were so incensed that they showed up en masse at Congress’s doorstep:

Dozens of hunters and anglers from across the country visited Capitol Hill, making nearly 100 visits with members of Congress and their staffers and meetings with Administration officials.

How did the representatives (and their staffers) manage to withstand all that political pressure? Almost 100 visits!

Meanwhile the three Congressmen targeted by NWFAF and their casters and shooters are Arkansas’s Mike Ross, Louisiana’s Charlie Melancon, and Utah’s Jim Matheson. All are members of the Subcommittee on Energy and Environment under the Waxman-chaired Energy and Commerce Committee. Here’s what each has said (PDF) recently about Waxman-Markey:

Ross: “If you don’t like $4-a-gallon gasoline, you’re really not going to like your electric bill sometime between now and 2030.”

Melancon: “I believe this bill would create an undue burden on families who are already paying too much in energy bills and on an industry that provides thousands of Louisianians with good jobs.”

Matheson: “The draft bill we are looking at today is a huge piece of legislation,” Matheson said at a hearing recently, bringing up 12 problems he sees with the bill. “It seeks to address an exceptionally complicated issue. I am concerned about moving so quickly.” (Salt Lake Tribune)

NWFAF is running a television ad (“Ducks are coming later; the seasons don’t change like they used to.” — What — are the leaves turning in the spring now?!) in the Little Rock district of Ross, and newspaper ads in Melancon’s (PDF) and Matheson’s (PDF) districts. Word out of DC is that Waxman-Markey has been “watered-down.” Certainly it won’t be enough to alleviate the quoted concerns expressed by the three congressmen.