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President Obama has delivered another victory for clean energy innovation. His administration has announced new standards for cars, SUVs and pickup trucks that will almost double the mileage requirements to 54.5 mpg by 2025. Like the president's recent decision to send the Keystone XL pipeline back to the drawing board, this move will put America on the road to recovery from oil addiction. Within 20 years, better-performing cars will save drivers more than $80 billion a year at the pump while cutting our oil use by an amount that exceeds all the oil we imported from Saudi Arabia and Iraq in 2010.
The new standards represent America's boldest response yet to climate change: They will cut vehicle emissions of carbon pollution in half by 2025, compared with today. The benefits of cleaner air, healthier families and a more stable climate will be driven by American innovation.
Now that U.S. automakers are turning their engineering prowess to fuel efficiency, American models are returning to the forefront of the market. And the new standards will put Americans to work. More than 150,000 Americans currently have jobs making parts for and assembling clean cars -- hybrids, electrics and other advanced vehicles that weren't available just 10 years ago. That's why the car industry, unions and environ-mentalists are united in support for President Obama's clean car standards.
Some GOP leaders, however, want to block these standards, even though all major stakeholders worked together to design and agree upon them. These lawmakers are so consumed with antigovernment fervor that they would actually derail standards that save money, create jobs and clean up our air just because the White House initiated them. I applaud President Obama's decision to put the interests of the American people ahead of polluters and their antiregulatory allies in Congress. In the coming months, NRDC will be fighting to ensure that they do not undermine America's bid to build the cars of
a cleaner future.
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“Within 20 years, better-performing cars will save drivers more than $80 billion a year at the pump while cutting our oil use by an amount that exceeds all the oil we imported from Saudi Arabia and Iraq in 2010.”
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