President Joe Biden’s climate agenda is finally showing some teeth.After more than a year of offering incentives for industries to invest in clean energy, the Biden administration on Wednesday announced what it called the most ambitious auto pollution rules in history, with the aim of accelerating automakers’ shift to electric vehicles.
The standards could result in battery-powered cars and trucks making up two-thirds of new light-vehicle sales by 2032, the Environmental Protection Agency said, while reducing oil imports, saving motorists thousands of dollars in fuel and maintenance costs, lessening air pollution deaths, and cutting the greenhouse gas pollution that’s warming the planet.
This is, as President Joe Biden said in a different context, a big f–ing deal. His administration wants to change the way Americans have traveled the roads for more than a century. But by pushing the industry to make the transition faster, Biden could risk a backlash from unwilling consumers, complicate questions about China’s dominance of electric vehicle supplies, and escalate his administration’s legal fight with the oil industry and GOP governors who oppose his efforts to phase out internal combustion engines.
On the plus side for Biden, though, electric vehicle sales are already rising. And carmakers, who are investing big money in going electric, have defended the EPA’s previous pollution rules in federal court.“Whether you measure today’s announcement by the dollars saved or the gallons reduced or the pollution that will no longer be pumped into the air, this is a win for the American people,” White House National Climate Advisor Ali Zaidi told reporters on Tuesday.
Still, even some supporters of the president’s climate policies say they worry about a host of complications, including consumers’ ability to afford the $50,000-and-up price of many electric vehicles now on the market. Biden’s signature climate law offers $7,500 tax breaks to lessen the sticker shock, but the Treasury Department announced rules just two weeks ago that will make those credits more difficult to get.
