Pump Up CO2 Debate

The auto industry is about to face its biggest regulatory challenge in the last quarter-century.

With the goal of fighting global warming, the California Air Resources Board has approved regulations requiring auto makers to slash carbon dioxide output by roughly 30% by 2016.

But the only way auto makers can achieve this reduction is to improve fuel economy by that amount. There is no special catalytic converter that can scrub out CO₂. It can only be done with fuel economy. That's where the war of words starts.

California enacted the first tailpipe emission standards in 1966, a year before the federal Clean Air Act of 1967. As such, it has always had the legal authority to write stricter emission standards than the federal government.

But auto makers claim the new standard for reducing CO₂ is really a fuel economy-standard. And dictating fuel-economy standards is something California can't legally do.

While most scientists argue man-made CO₂ is a contributing factor to global warming, there is not unanimous agreement on this issue. Nor is there unanimity on the seriousness of global warming. Moreover, CO₂ is a naturally occurring gas exhaled by people and animals and used for photosynthesis by plants. We couldn't exist without it. That complicates California's argument that CO₂ is a harmful emission that it can legally regulate.

Auto makers always fight regulations, claiming they're too expensive or technologically unfeasible, only to achieve them at a cost lower than expected. When they make the same claim about California's CO₂ reduction effort, their arguments fall on deaf ears.

And yet, the last major emission-reduction effort by CARB ended in disaster. In the early 1990s it wrote rules demanding that major car companies sell electric vehicles. It specifically ordered that 10 % of all vehicles sold in California by 2003 had to be electrics.

But the mandate didn't mean consumers actually would buy electric vehicles. Auto makers lost a fortune trying to meet the mandate, which was finally dropped in 2003 under pressure of lawsuits filed by the industry.

So what will happen with the latest CO₂ reduction effort? All auto makers oppose California's CO₂ regulation, even Toyota and Honda, which generally are praised for their enlightened environmental outlook. But what are they going to do about it?

Look for them to first approach California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to get him to rescind the legislation. The only problem: Schwarzenegger already is on the record saying he is in favor of it.

So expect this one to go to court, where the legal wrangling is likely to come down to whether or not carbon dioxide is indeed a pollutant. If it is, then California has all the legal authority it needs. If not, look for the auto makers to win this one.

John McElroy is editorial director of Blue Sky Productions and producer of “Autoline Detroit” for WTVS-Channel 56, Detroit, and Speed Channel.