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Hoist on their own petard

By pharrell

Talk about being hoist on their own petard. A lawyer involved (on the pro-environmental side) in the automakers' lawsuit against California's car emissions standards spoke at Yale today about a recent court decision holding that Vermont could adopt California's emissions standards, if and when the EPA ever signs off on California imposing them. At trial, the auto makers screamed up and down that they couldn't possibly meet the standards, which, are, admittedly, a bit more stringent than the CAFE standard increase that Congress passed a few months ago. But Detroit was undercut by its own recent attempts at greenwashing: as the trial was going on, GM's press flaks were splashily touting the company's progress on its Chevy Volt plug-in hybrid at the Shanghai auto show, which, along with the fact that the car makers' European subsidiaries already make cars that would comply with the standards, didn't leave the judge terribly receptive of Detroit's legal arguments.

The interesting question, going ahead, is whether Detroit will find itself hoist on its own petard when Congress takes up comprehensive climate change legislation next year. Car makers have long touted all kinds of futuristic technologies that they promise they'll deliver in ten or fifteen years as a way to preempt regulation, but, somehow, few of these advances ever make it to the market. (In the computer world, this is called "vaporware.") But next year, perhaps, Congress can cite Detroit's own press releases as evidence car makers can, in fact, cut American emissions, and require them to do so. That would be poetic justice.

Full post as published by Harrell Blog on March 26, 2008 (boomark / email).