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- Newsgroups: misc.activism.progressive
- Path: sparky!uunet!wupost!mont!pencil.cs.missouri.edu!daemon
- From: harelb@math.cornell.edu (misc.activism.progressive co-moderator)
- Subject: BUSH Administration Hushes Auto Efficiency Studies
- Message-ID: <1992Aug31.213558.20261@mont.cs.missouri.edu>
- Followup-To: alt.activism.d
- Originator: daemon@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
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- Nntp-Posting-Host: pencil.cs.missouri.edu
- Organization: misc.activism.progressive on UseNet ; ACTIV-L@UMCVMB
- Date: Mon, 31 Aug 1992 21:35:58 GMT
- Approved: map@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
- Lines: 52
-
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- =========================================
- C o n s e r v a t i o n C o v e r - u p
- =========================================
-
- From the July/August _Multinational Monitor_.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
- SUMMARY: Bush Admin. squelches taxpayer funded research showing
- cars could be much more efficient than they are, using existing
- technology.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
-
- Under pressure from the Bush Administration, the Environmental
- Protection Agency (EPA) this year stopped publishing an annual report
- which showed new cars' fuel efficiency could be significantly enhanced
- without changing car size. A July 2, 1991 letter from Barry Felrice,
- associate administrator for rulemaking at the National Highway and
- Traffic Safety Administration, to Karl Hellman of the Office of Air
- and Radiation at EPA said, "[W]e are disturbed over the 'best in
- class' analysis' which makes it appear that CAFE [corporate average
- fuel economy] can be greatly improved without changing the size mix of
- vehicles." The letter was recently made public by the Sierra Club and
- the Center for Auto Safety (CAS).
-
- A CAS analysis of EPA's 1992 data showed that the passenger car
- fleet would attain an average of 35 miles per gallon (mpg) if every
- car did as well as the best car in its class, without requiring any
- new technology or shifts to smaller cars. According to CAS, shifting
- to a "best-in-class" fleet would save 800,000 barrels of gas per day
- and would reduce annual carbon dioxide emissions by 125 million tons.
- The Sierra Club says that reducing auto pollution is the clearest way
- to curb threatened global warming, and that raising the CAFE standards
- to 40 mpg will save the average U.S. family $650 per year at the gas
- pump.
-
- CAS and the Sierra Club are calling on the EPA to restore the
- annual analysis. Daniel Becker, director of global warming and energy
- at the Sierra Club, says, "This is an atrocious case of political
- interference in science. The political hacks in the Bush
- Administration have pulled the plug on the technical experts at EPA
- because the facts don't support the president's political aganda."
-
- ******************************************************************
- _Multinational Monitor_ [ISSN 0197-4637] is published on "100% recycled"
- paper by Essential Information Inc., 1530 P. ST NW, Washington, DC 20005
- (202)387-8030. It carries no advertising, and fills gaps left by "news"
- publications which exist to deliver an audience to advertisers.
- ******************************************************************
- Transcribed by: cls@truffula.sj.ca.us (Cameron L. Spitzer)
- ******************************************************************
- Prettied up by macros on Free Software Foundation's GNU Emacs.
- (gnu@prep.ai.mit.edu for more info).
-