{Photo by Pacific Institute}

President Obama yesterday took a ‘major’ step” that many progressives had been waiting on for a long time, when he resolved the dispute between California and auto-makers over regulating how much gas cars can guzzle.

For those who haven’t been following this telenovela-worthy drama, the backstory goes like this: It’s the year 2005 and California wants to reduce it’s carbon footprint because it recognizes that such measures would help save people money, improve public health and save its agricultural land from becoming a desert. Republican Governor Schwarzenegger agrees that making cars guzzle less gas would be a cost-effective, consumer friendly way to address all these issues and approves mandating that cars sold in the Golden State must burn less oil. Car companies, being the trigger-happy criminals that they are, decide to complain to their friend President Bush to avoid ‘burdensome’ regulation arguing that it would bee too chaotic and unfair for them to have to follow different standards for every state, all this while crying croccodile tears on their private jets. Now, under the oversight any president with any respect for its citizens, this issue would have been resolved pretty quickly and California would have been granted the permit to set their own regulations. But the Bush administration’s Environmental Protection Agency, known for its Environmentally Pejorative Actions, denied California its right to protect its citizens leading to a drawn out law suit which wasn’t resolved until yesterday, when President Obama stepped in and passed an extremely Obanesque solution.

Yesterday President Obama said that the Federal government understands the pain felt by car company executives, and agrees that it would be unfair for them to have to be regulated by a patchwork of different standards. It was therefore decided that California would drop it’s claims for special treatment (at least until 2016) and, to make it up to them, the Federal Government would adopt California’s standards for the whole nation. In your face car company executives!

What does this means in terms of numbers? As Kate Sheppard, Grist.org’s D.C. correspondent explains:

“The new standards will reportedly raise fleet-wide standards for cars to 42 miles per gallon by 2016, up from 27.5 mpg now. For light trucks, the required fleet average will rise to about 26.2 mpg by 2016, up from about 24 mpg now. Ultimately, this will mean a 30 percent reduction in global-warming emissions from new vehicles by 2016, with improvements beginning in the 2011 model year.”

In laypeople’s terms? It means that all cars sold in the United States will have to be significantly more efficient than they are now, saving consumers money and improving public health. In addition to this great announcement, the Obama administration has taken significant steps to invest in alternatives to people’s dependence on cars like the previously announced investments in high speed rail.

So, is everything rosey on the sustainable transit front? Not even close. As great as the increase in mileage standards is, it doesn’t go as far as it could and it isn’t coupled with a serious program to get inefficient cars off the road. I say ’serious’ because the only proposal on the table, the so-called cash-for-clunkers proposal introduced by car industry executive darling Representative Dingell, is a joke. The current cash-for-clunkers bill was shoved in the American Clean Energy and Security act in order to buy Dingell’s vote for this climate saving, clean energy job creating, economy recovering piece of legislation. Let me repeat that: Dingell demanded an awful corporate-friendly, citizen-hurting provision in exchange for his vote for a planet saving piece of legislation. You’d think that after decades of fighting to protect America’s car industries‘ right not to innovate to the point where they are now unable to compete in the global market, Dingell would just shut up and work for his constituents. What exactly is so bad with this provision? The cash-for-clunkers proposal rewards you if you “buy a new S.U.V. with only slightly better gas mileage — 18 m.p.g. rather than 16 — and you qualify for a $3,500 voucher from the government. If the new S.U.V. gets 21 m.p.g., the payment goes up to $4,500.” Furthermore, this provision only hands you cash if you buy a new car, making it inaccessible for the bulk of the population that can’t afford to make the change despite the copious government handout. Check out this great Op-Ed for a detailed account of everything wrong with this proposal.

{Photo from Heroesandcriminals @ Etsy.com}

You might notice that, other than a brief mention of High Speed Rail, this conversation has been extremely car-centric. That is because for now there hasn’t been progress on much else. A huge transportation funding bill will be going through congress soon, so look out if you are a bike, pedestrian and alternative transportation enthusiast. Given Obama’s friendly attitude towards community-based planning, we can expect some pretty positive steps, but you can be sure that Dingell and other highway friendly representatives will fight tooth and nail to keep as much road funding as possible. Check out this really cool new campaign that started on bike to work day to lobby for a people-centric approach to transportation.