Well, I suppose it helps if you, first, don’t know what Federalism is.
There’s a spate of people supportive of the recent move by California to impose stricter vehicle emissions than current Federal law requires. One of the arguments that they advance is that this is a Federalism issue, or a “States Rights” issue.
Nothing could be farther from the truth.
Federalism and States Rights are about the sovereignty of the states in the Federal Union, and their right to decide how to regulate themselves rather than simply obeying rules formulated for every all states from Washington DC.
So, you say, it is a Federalism issue. Not so fast. Look at what the outcome of this would be.
First, you have to realize that California is a big state and contains several important markets. The Auto makers, already not doing well, will not give up on this market and they will make their cars to meet those new stricter standards. What they will not do is build cars that are for the California market and other cars that are for everywhere else with the different standards. Even if the “49 state” cars would be cheaper to produce, one-to-one, having to maintain two, nearly, but not quite, identical sets of infrastructure increases costs.
That makes cars more expensive, which makes them harder to sell, which is a bad thing—especially when you are already having some trouble selling your product.
Instead, they will make all their cars to meet the California standards. Won’t matter if Texas would allow the looser standards or not the cars will meet the California rules.
So. What difference does it make if California sets higher standards or DC does? If you answer anything but “none,” you’ve failed to pay attention.
If this were Delaware or Rhode Island, it might be different—the auto makers might be able to reasonably do some kind of add-on for the relatively small number of cars sold in those markets. Or they could, reasonably abandon those markets—depending on the additional costs, it might not matter. Delaware residents who want new cars might well go buy cars in Maryland to avoid the additional costs and thus kill off the dealerships at home anyway.
California is big enough to be a bully and they’ve done this before. When standards are forced on a state, it is NOT Federalism. The only thing California will accomplish by this, especially since the standards they wish to promulgate are based on junk science, is to provide political cover to Congress and the EPA who can claim that it’s “not our fault.”
The Raving Crowd:
Josh Nelson at The Seminal: “How dare California insist on improvements to vehicle efficiency? The nerve! Those with a sense of history will remember that California’s requirement that all vehicles sold in the state have catalytic converters eventually brought about the requirement in all 50 states. This improvement has saved countless lives and has drastically reduced emissions of toxic nitrogen oxides and carbon monoxide.”
Response: The catalytic converter effectively changes harmful pollutants into carbon dioxide and water. And that’s what you want, huh? Yep. California Leads the Way! Please note that Josh offers no support for his “life saving” claim.
The Constitutional Accountability Center: “Automakers would then have to start manufacturing cars that meet the new standards, which call for a phased in reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 30% from new cars and light trucks between 2009 and 2016.”
Response: Pretentious name, but at least they make no bones about it. Have bought into the junk science but they know how to cite legal precedent.
Matthew Yglesias at Think Progress: “I’d forgotten about the Bush administration’s idiosyncratic take on states’s (sic) rights and air pollution until I read about how we’re going to start heading in a non-insane direction.”
Response: It’s “non-insane” if you don’t know what the words mean, yeah. But, hey, whatever gets him out of his funks.
Jordan Ballor at Power Blog: “Why not give federalism free reign on environmental issues, let states compete against each other, and see how things play out? If California wants to experiment with enacting tougher restrictions while attempting to remain economically competitive, why not see if the state is able to pull it off?”
Response: Because not all state are equal in market share, population and wealth distribution. Bust California up into two or three states and I’d consider the idea. Well, not for long.
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