Fact-checking the petulant petrochemical pushers
If Shondaland is ever looking to do a “How To Get Away With Murder” spin-off, we would humbly propose a remake about the lobbyists pushing to preserve lead pipes and forever chemicals in our water, to keep fracking near homes and schools, to keep power plants burning coal and gas, to keep car tailpipes polluting, and so on.
With eight million people dying each year across the globe from air pollution (including 100-200,000 deaths a year in the U.S. alone), and over five million of those deaths attributable to ambient air pollution resulting from fossil fuel use, advocating to keep fossil fuels around is advocating for millions of premature deaths. Yet the lobbyists for gas cars would have you believe that a tailpipe rule which will provide hundreds of billions of dollars in benefits to society each year will create a world of “less freedom.”
This week’s newsletter breaks down the sorts of arguments that American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM), a major lobbying group that represents the corporations which make petrochemical fuels, uses to keep cars polluting. But first, a little background…
The Strongest Standard In History; Not Nearly Strong Enough
In March 2024, the Environmental Protection Agency released its finalized rule on tailpipe emissions standards for model year 2027-2032 passenger vehicles. EPA touted the rule as achieving the reduction of “7 billion tons of carbon emissions… [providing] nearly $100 billion of annual net benefits to society, including $13 billion of annual public health benefits due to improved air quality, and $62 billion in reduced annual fuel costs, and maintenance and repair costs for drivers.”
Despite being the strongest emissions standard in history, the new rule did not go nearly as far as it should have in mitigating the transportation sectors’ huge share of polluting and climate-warming emissions in the United States.
Ironically, while the rule contains many concessions to Big Auto, Big Oil, and car dealers, it has since been met with outrage by those same bad faith actors. In May of 2024, the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM) released an eight-figure ad campaign attacking the EPA’s finalized rule.
AFPM’s campaign, entitled “Don’t Ban Our Cars,” attempts to position the industry as champions of consumers and the public interest, counter-framing the EPA as devilishly conspiratorial in seeking to create a world of “limited choices” and “less freedom.” Indeed, blasted in large orange font all over their website, AFPM insists that we need to “KEEP THE GOVERNMENT’S HANDS OFF OUR CARS!” by demanding Congress functionally reject and repeal the EPA’s rule.
The website and its accompanying ads are riddled with falsehoods and fear mongering about the state of the industry, current technological capacities, and the EPA’s own authorities. Though AFPM attempts to position itself as a consumer advocate and bulwark against the specter of government overreach, most of what the organization says is misleading at best and an outright lie at worst.
So, let’s fact check it.
“How Will Automakers Comply?”
AFPM’s fear mongering is reliant upon a number of things. First, as the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) previously examined, the EPA standard is not an arbitrary invention of the future, but is instead reliant upon the wider-scale adoption of technologies already in use.
AFPM attempts to obfuscate this reality by declaring that “no gas, diesel or traditional hybrid vehicles come close to meeting EPA’s 85 grams/mile target,” which conveniently obfuscates the reality that there are many EVs on the market right now that do meet this target.
Automakers will have to invest more in the EV infrastructure in order to see the fleetwide reductions in overall emissions that the rule requires, but to do so is merely inconvenient—not impossible—for the automakers and fossil fuels interests seeking to entrap us in their polluting profit margins.
“Will Consumers Be Able To Buy New Gas Cars?”
AFPM asserts that “unless consumer vehicle preferences change dramatically, not every consumer who wants to buy a gas car will be able to get one, and many more won’t be able to afford them, which is why this regulation is going to function as a ‘ban’ on gas cars.”
As UCS has previously noted, “It’s important to remember that even without these rules, the market for EVs is expected to grow substantially with estimates ranging around 30 percent to more than 50 percent sales by 2030.” The consumer appetite towards EVs is positively changing in a trend that is expected to continue. AFPM, once again, conveniently ignores this reality.
AFPM is correct to point out that many of the EVs sold in the US were in California, driven in part by significant state support and subsidy for cars and charging infrastructure to aid the electrification transition. But states like Texas, Florida, and New York also saw an increase in EV sales and ownership just last year, despite state leaders being markedly “antagonistic” to EVs and EV owners.
Furthermore, it’s patently absurd for AFPM to feign concern about protecting consumer choice and articulating concerns about consumer costs, when many of AFPM’s own members (including Exxon and Chevron) saw record–breaking profits in 2022 that were mostly a result of Big Oil’s vicious price-gouging during a year that saw 35 percent of people state that their financial situation deteriorated.
AFPM and its members have only ever been interested in protecting their own profit margins, consumers (and climate) be damned.
“Why Are Only Gas-Guzzling Cars Being Penalized?”
AFPM also expresses concern about EPA not adequately accounting for “lifecycle emissions” in its crafting of the LDV standard.
AFPM is correct that all vehicles have negative impacts on the environment. One of the best ways to combat catastrophic climate change is to divest our cities and states from car-centric infrastructure, build out comprehensive wide scale public transportation, and otherwise radically redesign our current transportation system.
This is not AFPM’s argument, however.
Instead, AFPM argues that gas-guzzling cars are being unfairly penalized for their negative impacts on the environment when EVs impact the environment, too. EVs, like all personal vehicles, do have an impact on the environment—and there are crucial conversations ongoing related to ensuring that EV-related mining and construction processes are adherent to principles of environmental justice throughout their supply-chains and are otherwise compliant with an actually equitable and just future for all.
That said, over its total lifetime EVs still produce almost half the emissions compared to their gas-burning counterparts, use around 60 percent less energy, and have the potential to stimulate a circular economy around electric vehicle batteries. Not to mention that, over their lifetimes, EVs save consumers thousands of dollars, even when accounting for EV’s higher upfront costs.
To be clear, neither AFPM nor its members care about a full or accurate rendering of emissions and climate risks. The oil and gas industry, including AFPM member Exxon, spent decades poisoning the American and global publics and can be directly credited for causing (and worsening) some of the worst environmental disasters in recorded human history.
Indeed, all top 20 global polluters are in the fossil fuels industry. Five of the west’s largest oil companies,—Chevron, ExxonMobil, BP, ConocoPhillips, and Shell—all number in the top thirteen polluters globally. Chevron and Exxon alone, both AFPM members, have racked up an impressive $4,612,777,046 in violations from U.S. government entities, with $3,082,844,301 of that representing their fines associated with environmental violations. (Note: These numbers are compiled from the Good Jobs First Violation Tracker and can be found here for each Chevron and Exxon.) As we’ve said before, and will surely affirm again, fossil fuel front groups do not care about you.
“Is The EPA Even Allowed To Do This?”
AFPM would have you believe that the EPA is engaging in a gross overreach of agency authority in its establishment of these standards. It is not.
In fact, EPA has long had the explicit authority, and a clear cut responsibility, under Section 202(a)1 of the Clean Air Act (CAA) to regulate emissions from the transportation sector. That section vests the EPA’s Administrator with the authority to set “standards applicable to the emission of any air pollutant from any class or classes of new motor vehicles or new motor vehicle engines, which in his judgment cause, or contribute to, air pollution which may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare.”
Despite this unambiguous mandate, AFPM partnered with Republican Attorneys General just last year to challenge EPA’s ability to set the standards at all. As we have previously analyzed,
“if successful — [the challenge] could pose a dire threat to the Clean Air Act, because such a ruling could functionally gut the EPA’s mandate to regulate emissions relating to the transportation sector, and would likely have radiating consequences beyond it. This is dangerous not just because the transportation sector is hugely polluting, and the climate (and public health) costs of such a defanging would be sweeping and immense. But also because the Clean Air Act is a bedrock environmental law that is both extraordinarily popular and effective, and such a precedent would further erode the federal government’s basic ability to regulate against the dangerous pollutants and deadly particulates promulgating our air.”
Oral arguments for the case were heard in September of 2023, but the D.C. Circuit has yet to determine what it will do with Texas’ and AFPM’s absurd claims.
Given the huge sums that AFPM and its members have thrown at Republican attorneys general over the years, this partnership is unsurprising, though AFPM and its companies continue to poison normal people in (and outside of) these AGs’ own states.
An Advocate Against The Climate And Consumers
AFPM, like other fossil fuel fronts, does not care about consumers—never has, and never will.
Instead, it will continuously seek to lie, deceive, and manipulate the public in order to protect its own polluting bottom lines at the expense of consumers, communities, and the climate.
Want more? Check out some of the pieces that we have published or contributed research or thoughts to in the last week:
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Antitrust Enforcers: “The Rent Is Too Damn High!”
Linda McMahon Is a Dangerous Extremist Hell-Bent on Cementing Autocracy in the US