The concept of global warming has gotten a lot of press in the last few months, what with Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth leading a chorus of concerned voices from the scientific and political communities. I saw the movie shortly after it came out, and it certainly influenced some of the lifestyle choices that I’ve made—I pay more attention to recycling, try to drive my car less if I can walk or ride a bike, and generally have been supportive of legislation which would cap or reduce the emission of greenhouse gases.
That said, yesterday’s announcement that California is planning to sue six automakers for contributing to global warming strikes me as rather absurd. The rundown from the The Washington Post via San Jose’s Mercury News:
California filed a lawsuit against the six largest automakers operating in the United States, contending that car and truck emissions are causing global warming, injuring the state’s environment, economy and endangering public health.
The complaint, filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Oakland, is the latest escalation in an ongoing clash between states and the U.S. auto industry over global warming. The California complaint contends that under federal and state common law the automakers have created a public nuisance by producing millions of vehicles that collectively emit massive quantities of carbon dioxide.
(…)
California Attorney General Bill Lockyer pegged current damages at “tens of millions of dollars.” He said the amount could grow as the lawsuit fight continues over time.
“Money is being spent in our regulatory system preparing for small disruptions in the water supply due to the smaller snow pack, saltwater intrusion of the water supply, beach erosion,” Lockyer said in an interview Wednesday. “There is a lot of spending that is already ongoing that we are claiming. The point is, taxpayers shouldn’t pay for those damages, the industry should.”
This kind of lawsuit immediately reminds me of the lawsuits, both threatened and delivered, to cigarette companies for the dangers of secondhand smoke, or fast food restaurants for the health implications of absurd hamburgers. But there is one major difference—unlike the calories of a value meal, auto emissions have been regulated for years, and California has traditionally had the most stringent standards in the entire country. If the automakers have been meeting those standards, and there’s no indication that they haven’t, how can they be sued for following the state’s own regulations?
We might as well retroactively sue Gottlieb Daimler and Henry Ford for helping create the automobile culture in the first place.
As much as some of us would like to twist the knife into big business and celebrate a victory for the environment, isn’t this very much a backwards approach to lowering greenhouse pollutants? The correct way, of course, would be to legislate tougher standards that the auto manufacturers will have to abide by, but that would deprive Lockyer from his photo-op moment in the sun.
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Speaking of auto emissions and global warming, why hasn’t anyone come up with an idea to get some of the older cars, which have much looser emissions standards than any new car (yes, even Hummers), off the road? There are already programs that provide a credit to consumers who replace old appliances with newer, Energy Star compliant models, so wouldn’t it make sense to look into something similar for automobiles?