President Trump announced in August that he is freezing fuel efficiency standards through 2026. Max Goldberg / Wikimedia
In a draft environmental impact statement, the Trump administration has projected that global temperatures will rise 7 degrees Fahrenheit (about 4 degrees Celsius) above pre-industrial levels by the end of the century if nations fail to drastically reduce their greenhouse gas emissions, The Washington Post reported. The administration then used this projection to justify the President’s decision to freeze federal fuel efficiency standards.
“The amazing thing they’re saying is human activities are going to lead to this rise of carbon dioxide that is disastrous for the environment and society,” Michael MacCracken, chief scientist for Climate Change Programs at the non-profit Climate Institute, told The Post. “And then they’re saying they’re not going to do anything about it.”
The Obama-era standards, finalized after an agreement with automakers in 2012, would have required cars and light trucks built after 2020 to reach ambitious fuel efficiency targets — 41.7 miles per gallon (mpg) for cars by 2020, and 54.5 mpg by 2025. But the Trump administration’s 500-page draft environmental impact statement, issued last month by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, concludes that the standards would not have a significant enough impact on reducing global warming to be worth the added vehicle costs to consumers.
Reducing emissions sufficiently to curb climate change “would require substantial increases in technology innovation and adoption compared to today’s levels and would require the economy and the vehicle fleet to move away from the use of fossil fuels, which is not currently technologically feasible or economically feasible,” the analysis concludes.
The report also projects that if the world takes no action to curb emissions, atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide would rise from 410 parts per million today to 789 ppm by 2100 — nearly triple the pre-industrial level.
For more, click here to read the original Washington Post story.
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