As U.S. Administration Rolls Back Pollution Standards on Vehicles It Makes a Damning Prediction

September 28, 2018 – In a draft of the revised emission rules for cars and light trucks in the United States created by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), it describes how these changes will impact climate change. NHTSA weighs the impact of increased greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from relaxed pollution standards including measuring the damages that would ensue. Section 5.4 of the report describes projected impacts which include:

• the increase in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from passenger cars and trucks.
• the direct and indirect impacts on the overall climate.

CO2 totals based on a range of exercised standards are expected to rise to 479 parts per million (ppm) by 2040, to as high as 789 ppm by 2100.

Global mean surface temperatures based on the same range of standards are expected to rise 1.287 Celsius (2.3 Fahrenheit) by 2040, to 3.484 Celsius (approximately 6.3 Fahrenheit) by 2100.

The NHTSA report also predicts both ocean level rise and changes in pH levels (ocean acidification).

For sea level rise the predictions are 22.87 centimeters by 2040 and 76.3 centimeters by 2100.

Changes in the pH range from 8.41 to 8.22, from 2040 to 2100 respectively.

What is so disturbing about this frank admission by the NHTSA is that it accompanies recommendations to scrap the environmental and emission standards put in place by the previous U.S. administration under Barack Obama.

When the nations of the world committed voluntarily to keep mean temperatures from rising above 2.0 Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit), and to try and work to a lower target of 1.5 Celsius (2.4 Fahrenheit), the reasons given were simple. It was determined that a temperature rise of 3 Celsius or higher would be catastrophic for food production, would impact freshwater resources, and would produce heat waves and extreme weather events at a higher frequency than at any time in recorded history.

The NHTSA’s draft 500 plus page report, which spends a significant amount of time in describing human as well as non-human causes of climate change, sees nothing irresponsible in advocating lower fuel efficiency standards while recognizing the recommendations will yield greater quantities of GHGs and subsequently higher mean average temperatures. In other words, the NHTSA has no intention of doing anything to alter the behaviour of manufacturers of cars and trucks to help make the global environment healthier for humans and all other living things. American commerce need not be inhibited by a few extra degrees of heat if a dollar can be made from it by doing nothing.

And considering that this U.S. administration talks out of one side of its mouth labeling global warming a Chinese-inspired hoax while stating categorically in a commissioned report that we are living in it and will see warming get much worse as the century unfolds, is a perplexing contradiction.

It makes you wonder what the people in the White House and the rest of the administration are smoking.