Two nights before leaving the country, I attended a meeting of like-minded people in Bangor concerning cars and the environment. The impetus for the meeting was a recent Congressional push to roll back rules on “clean car” standards, which require manufacturers to hit target emissions goals between now and the year 2025.

According to the Natural Resources Council of Maine, which hosted the meeting: “Transportation is a leading source of climate-changing carbon pollution in Maine and across the country. America’s most significant action to clean up the transportation sector was implementing a new set of clean car standards in 2012 to boost vehicle fuel efficiency and reduce carbon pollution from tailpipes. By 2025, these standards will have roughly doubled fleet-wide fuel efficiency to 54.5 miles per gallon.”

The legislation requires manufacturers to adopt steadily increasing fuel efficiency standards each year. But now, a group of six Republican Senators, backed by the White House, wants to “flatline” these standards after 2020. Their proposed bill would allow carmakers to miss the 2025 goals by 8-10 miles per gallon. It doesn’t take a mathematical genius to figure out that this would cost the average driver more money at the pump, while increasing pollution in a state downwind from most of America’s highways.

Several states, including Maine, adopted even stronger standards. According to an April 2018 article in Scientific American, Maine has already exceeded its goal of reducing 1990 emissions by 10 percent before 2020. But that good work could be wasted if greenhouse gases continue to waft in from the west.

Slower Traffic is not, and has never been, a political blog. But it seems to me that the quality of the air we breathe ought to matter to people on both sides of our growing partisan chasm. If you can’t give up your car entirely – and many people in Maine can’t – wouldn’t you at least want to drive one that burns less gas? If there’s such a thing as a no-brainer in politics, reducing the harm caused by cars should be one.

Some fifty people showed up for the meeting, and were encouraged to comment on this proposed legislation.  These comments will become part of the public record in the hearing process leading up to a potential vote on the proposed rollbacks.

Senator Susan Collins sent a representative and a letter opposing the proposal. Bangor city council member Sarah Nichols, whose father collected and analyzed air samples atop Cadillac Mountain when she was growing up, said that emissions standards result in “healthier minds, healthier bodies, and healthier wallets for all of us.”
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The comment that stood out most to me came from Dr. Bill Wood of Bangor. He pointed out that the only possible beneficiaries of lowered standards are vehicle manufacturers, who get to pass along the costs of pollution to “the commons” – that is, all of us. Consumers pay more at the pump and in increased health care costs, while manufacturers save money on less stringent emissions standards. Profits go up for them, while costs increase for the rest of us.

The only solution, he said, is to “get your hands dirty” in the political process. “Our democratic system needs to counter-balance market forces,” he said. “The system is corrupt, but not hopeless.”

He’s right. Market forces work well in many cases. But they don’t prevent the construction of condos in the Grand Canyon, or the increasing air pollution in Acadia National Park, whose air quality ranks among the worst in the entire national park system. Only legislation can do that. I can understand the small-government philosophy of Republicans, but I can’t understand their hostility to laws protecting our natural resources – especially in Maine.

We already have too many cars. The least we can do is mandate they run a little bit cleaner.

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This blog is moving into a new phase. For the next eight months, I’ll be posting from Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria, where I’ve taken a teaching job for the academic year. A friend wisecracked that I should rename it “Even Slower Traffic.” I’ll see if that’s the case.

It’s hazy here today, from the heat, not from any European wildfires that I know about. The mountainous landscape reminds me of inland southern California, before you get to the desert – Escondido, say, or San Bernardino, but without as many cars. I haven’t really looked around yet. One of the duties of a writer is to keep his eyes and ears open, and to report honestly before forming an opinion. I’ll try to do that.

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