Jerry Brown: Automotive Champion?!

Let's assume that Jerry Brown wants to be constructive. He admits that he has no idea how to change consumer behavior. Let the automakers wave their magic technological wand. I will still argue that suitable purchase and use taxation will be the most effective aid to changing automotive consumer behavior, giving a realistic chance of California's concerns with Global Warming to be addressed in the real world. (click on post title for rest of column.)

EYES ON THE ROAD By JOSEPH B. WHITE California, Auto Makers Battle Over Vehicle Emissions Flurry of Litigation Over Efforts to Reduce The Environmental Impact of Cars, Trucks February 24, 2007, Wall Street Journal When it comes to automobiles, California isn't just another state. It's something close to a sovereign nation -- a nation currently at war with a fair chunk of the auto industry. California's recent efforts to regulate carbon dioxide emissions as a pollutant, and to mandate reductions of CO2 emissions, including gases coming out of vehicle tailpipes, has provoked a flurry of litigation with big auto makers. The car companies contend California's efforts to clamp down on CO2 amount to an effort to regulate fuel economy, and states have no right to supersede federal fuel efficiency laws. The state has countered that car makers, by persisting in selling gas guzzlers to Californians, are creating a public nuisance by contributing to the ill effects caused by global warming -- including rising sea levels that could threaten California's 1,075 miles of coastline and dwindling mountain snows that could undermine the state's water supply. (Read the complaint1) Into this fight comes now California Attorney General Edmund G. Brown -- yes, that Jerry Brown, the former California governor who ran for president three times and more recently was Mayor of Oakland. Mr. Brown inherited the litigation with the auto industry when he took his current office in January. Some have called on Mr. Brown to quit the state's legal fight with the auto industry. But Mr. Brown has chosen a different tack. He has called on the chief executives of the six biggest auto makers in the U.S. market to meet with him to find "cooperative approaches" to the global warming issue. (Read his letter2) So far, the auto makers have declined, through their attorney, to schedule a CEO summit. Instead they have offered to send "legal representatives" to brief Mr. Brown on the industry's "multi-faceted efforts to improve fuel efficiency." So what does Jerry Brown really want? In a telephone interview, the attorney general says his real goal is to help the car companies. "This is not a problem that is going to be swept under the rug," he says. "It is getting intense scrutiny. Even a year ago, people would not expect we would be as far into this issue as we are." .... Mr. Brown also remembers that when he was governor, the auto makers fought seat belts. And he says electric cars, once mandated under California law, "died because the car companies wanted (them) to die." Industry executives counter that electric cars died because they were exorbitantly expensive, and the vast majority of consumers had no interest in buying them, preferring instead the larger, heavier vehicles Mr. Brown is denouncing. But Mr. Brown's point is that the auto industry has a long history of insisting that it cannot profitably build cleaner, safer cars -- only to be shown up when such advances turn out to be both possible and profitable. .... To a significant degree, the dispute between California and the car makers is a culture clash. California has a long history of using its special status as the nation's biggest car market to press for risk-taking on advanced technology. This is what you'd expect from a state whose economy is based to a great degree on nimble, high-tech entrepreneurship. Auto makers, by contrast, are stuck with a business that involves sinking enormous chunks of capital into machinery and factories staffed by thousands of workers whose labors will yield a return only after several years. Those returns will come only if the car makers haven't misjudged, while planning their vehicles three to five years earlier, consumer tastes or the price of oil. The risks inherent in auto making breed a certain conservatism -- all the more so given the inconsistent track record of various on-board gadgetry. The other problem is that car makers don't create CO2 emissions by driving cars. People do. Mr. Brown, who says his last car was a Mercury Sable purchased in 1991, concedes that changing Californians' motoring habits won't be easy, he says. ....