Corporate Average Fuel Economy - Global Warming

CAFE fast facts:

Can reduce urban smog, aiding cities and communities in complying with the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments. It is the biggest single policy step the U.S. can take to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
Can be done by strengthening an existing successful law without creating a new bureaucracy
Enjoys bipartisan support of legislators in the U.S. Congress
Saves consumers money at the gas pump
Saves millions of barrels of oil daily, already

Increasing the fuel efficiency of automobiles is the biggest single step the United States can take to reduce consumption of fossil fuels and the threat of global warming.

We have a tool to achieve this goal in the form of Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards. Raising CAFE standards to 45 miles per gallon (mpg) for cars and 34 mpg for light trucks (trucks, vans, and sport utility vehicles) is the biggest single step we can take to curb global warming.

CAFE is a fleet-wide average standard. It is currently set at 27.5 mpg for cars and 20.7 mpg for light trucks (the standards have been stagnant for almost a decade.) In any given model year it requires that the average for an automaker's entire fleet meet its goals. Manufacturers can still make vehicles that get less than the standards, as long as they balance them with more efficient vehicles.

In 1997 all three US automakers violated CAFE standards for light trucks. Rather than improve their products, the Big 3 have waged a lobbying offensive in Washington DC, and have successfully influenced members of Congress to pass one year freezes on the law. 1997 was the third year that such a freeze was passed.

Ford, Chrysler, and General Motor's conduct on CAFE standards is reprehensible. They are not only damaging the environment and increasing the risk of a dangerous global warming, their gas guzzlers are also worsening America's trade deficit and exporting more money from US consumers into the bank accounts of multi-national oil corporations.

The Big 3's gas guzzlers pose risks to our natural resources as well. The fuel efficiency of America's automobile fleet is plummeting, and as it drops pressure is building to create new supplies of oil to fill the demand. This pressure is threatening sensitive wilderness areas like the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and the new national monument in Utah with oil development.