EPA's Decision Is Not Good News

The Environmental Protection Agency's decision to tie new gasoline mileage standards to regulation of greenhouse gas emissions isn't good news for consumers or representative government. Although some in the auto industry may hail the decision, it doesn't bode well for them, either.

The Obama administration on Tuesday trumpeted the nation's first-ever emissions standards for vehicles as a big step in meeting its climate-change and energy goals. Automakers will be forced to conform either to higher fuel efficiency standards than previously required or lower emission standards. The mandate becomes effective in 2012, annually ramping up average car and truck fuel economy to reach 35.5 miles per gallon by 2016, compared with today's 25 mpg.

What the administration didn't mention was that tying a mileage standard created by legislation to an emission standard created by administrative fiat is a giant step further into the administrative state.

Some automakers hailed the decision for eliminating conflicts between more demanding state requirements and the federal government's lower requirements. But praising more costly and more rigorous mandates because they simplify compliance only reveals how much control the government already has over the industry.

Automakers didn't say how much compliance will increase new car prices. But the administration said motorists will save at the pump. The greatest danger probably lies in the precedent set.

"It's a disaster in the making," said Marlo Lewis of the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

"Going about it in this way ... sets the stage for a whole regulatory chain reaction under multiple provisions of the Clean Air Act."

The U.S. Supreme Court opened this door to administrative authority with a 2007 ruling that for the first time determined carbon dioxide to be a pollutant, therefore something to be regulated under the Clean Air Act. By including greenhouse gases as so-called "pollutants," they are now subject to the same emission thresholds as historic pollutants. That, Lewis said, means 1.2 million structures, including most office buildings, big-box commercial buildings and restaurants would come under regulation.

"They will all be swept into this regulatory net," Lewis said. Compliance administrative costs to obtain permits would average about $125,000 per business, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

To mitigate, the EPA may choose to administratively change the emission standards for some greenhouse gases. But Lewis notes such an administrative change of a law passed by Congress would violate separation of powers.

We shudder at the prospect of an overreaching administrative, carbon-suppression regime that many see as more costly to the economy than Congress' pending cap-and-trade legislation, or the anti-global warming Kyoto Protocol rejected 95-0 by the U.S. Senate.

By tying the already flawed mandated vehicle mileage standards to equally arbitrary greenhouse gas emission standards, the government will expand its administrative control in ways that greatly threaten representative government.

REPRINTED FROM THE NEW BERN SUN JOURNAL.

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