President Bush’s shameful and unlawful covert attempt to undermine court rulings, the Clean air act and block 18 states from higher fuel standards

Recently the Secretary of the Department of transportation put a proposal to mildly accelerate fuel standards from 3% per year to 4.5% per year up to 2015. However this was a ploy to put circumvent the Clean Air act and block California and several other states from adopting more aggressive car and truck fuel standards.

Jerry Brown called the Bush tactic: This fuel economy plan, while attractive on the surface, is a shameful and unlawful [covert] assault on California’s landmark vehicle emissions standard.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and 11 of his counterparts sent a letter to President Bush on Thursday protesting a federal proposal to limit California’s right to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from autos.

The letter came two days after the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration published a proposed set of fuel-efficiency standards that included a provision that would override California laws that set limits on carbon emissions from cars.

Thursday’s letter called the language “an end run around 40 years of precedent” and said that if the provision was not dropped, the states would sue NHTSA.

In a separate letter, sent to the top four leaders of the Senate and the House of Representatives, the governors called the proposed rule a “cynical attempt . . . to unilaterally rewrite the Clean Air Act and claim authority over greenhouse gas emissions.”


Country Current Standard Proposed Standard
China: 36 mpg 43 mpg. (2009)
Canada: 27 mpg (current avg, no standard) TBA (starting in 2011)
United States: 25 mpg (current average) 35 mpg. (proposed, 2020
new proposal 31.5 by 2015
California: 25 mpg (current) 36 mpg. (proposed, 2016)
Europe: 40 mpg (current) 48.9 mpg. (proposed 2012)
Japan: 40 mpg. (current) 48.9 mpg. (proposed, 2015)

Here is how Bush drones were trying to spin the “strengthening of CAFE standards.

On page 387 of the Department of Transportation proposal they had placed

any state regulation regulating tailpipe carbon dioxide emissions from automobiles is expressly pre-empted.

Some analysts are projecting $200/barrel oil prices and $7 per gallon for gasoline in the United States by 2012

Many electric and fuel efficient cars are and will be available.

6 thoughts on “President Bush’s shameful and unlawful covert attempt to undermine court rulings, the Clean air act and block 18 states from higher fuel standards”

  1. This is old technology for Z-pinch pulsed plasma fusion reactions. It's already been proven to be unsustainable and they have fools dumping money into it.

    This really needs investors to do their own research before jumping headlong into a project.

  2. The more viable approaches to fusion energy, the better. And what better use of a billionaire’s money than to risk it on the chance of becoming a mega-billionaire, or even a trillionaire?

    Young billionaire’s may still retain some gambling tendency. Although they will rarely risk it all on a throw of the dice, the amounts they can affordably risk can make ordinary heads spin.

  3. I love smart greedy people.

    The kind that developed the North American power grid for instance.

    Ultimately if they guess right they are benefactors of all men (not to mention themselves).

  4. They are not releasing progress reports. I tracked the tech report from the university where they got the technology. The money raised information is because of public nature of Venture capital funding.

    The VC funding shows that smart and greedy people having seen far more info than we have believe that they have a good shot at making well over ten times their return on $40 million even after any later round dilution.

  5. Most beam based fusion concepts suffer from difficulties running in continuous mode. It takes a lot of energy to make concentrated beams and these types of devices are typically pulsed devices (i.e., short bursts of operation).

    On a side note, it is not a good sign when one of the highlights of the progress focuses on how much money they have raised. It’s easier to convince two billionaires to give up some money then it is to solve the problems of fusion.

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