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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   34980 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 3, 2023

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E.P.A. Is Said to Propose Rules Meant to Drive Up Electric Car Sales Tenfold.

The Biden administration is planning some of the most stringent auto pollution limits in the world, designed to ensure that all-electric cars make up as much as 67 percent of new passenger vehicles sold in the country by 2032, according to two people familiar with the matter.

That would represent a quantum leap for the United States — where just 5.8 percent of vehicles sold last year were all-electric — and would exceed President Biden’s earlier ambitions to have all-electric cars account for half of those sold in the country by 2030.

...

The proposed rule would not mandate that electric vehicles make up a certain number or percentage of sales. Instead, it would require that automakers make sure the total number of vehicles they sell each year did not exceed a certain emissions limit. That limit would be so strict that it would force carmakers to ensure that two thirds of the vehicles they sold were all-electric by 2032, according to the people familiar with the matter.

To me this looks like they failed to make electric vehicles attractive to consumers compared to gas ones, so they're giving up on that and instead are going to effectively make gas vehicles illegal to manufacture. It's absolutely insane to me that the EPA can just destroy a major industry like this, and have a massive effect on the lives of every American, and they don't have ask anyone. Congress doesn't vote on it, the president doesn't sign it, it just happens because they said so.

I think that's a trend that's common with environmental regulations. Whether it's CFL bulbs, paper straws, gas stoves or low flow toilets, consumers get stuck with an inferior substitute and the alleged crisis never seems to actually get solved. It's always just a prelude for the next demand. And by doing it through the administrative state elected officials never have to take any flack for it. If congress had to pass a bill outlawing incandescent bulbs and the president had to sign it then voters would have someone to get mad at. But when it's a new DOE regulation that just appears, people don't know who to blame. Nobody ever has to argue for it or stake their career on it.

So I don't think things will change. Just like the CDC can declare themselves dictators of all apartment rentals because of the Covid crisis, the EPA can declare itself king of all energy because of the climate crisis. Year after year, more things will be banned, prices will go up and life will get worse. But most people will either not realize the reason or will have entirely forgotten that things used to be different.

On the one hand, this is horrible.

On the other hand, I'm glad that we Euros are no longer alone with this kind of horrible policy.

Misery loves company.

They're nowhere near as screwed as us yet. The EPA is part of the executive branch. The next president can simply order them to change it back.

As for the EU, decision making has been moved pretty much entirely out of the remit of anyone who is elected, and the only legal, democratic way to put a halt to it at this point is if everyone all at once were to vote to install national governments that leave the EU.

The next president can change it back but I'm not sure how much good it would do. You can't invest billions of dollars in R&D and building a factory if the next election turns it into a hole in the ground. Once you shut down the factories and all of the people with ICE experience move on to different careers that's not all just going to come back 4 years later when a Republican comes into office, with the knowledge that you'll probably just get shut down again after the next election.

They're nowhere near as screwed as us yet. The EPA is part of the executive branch. The next president can simply order them to change it back.

Nope, there's "anti-backsliding" provisions in the law; the regulations can only become stricter, not less strict.

The EPA is making law an elected body can’t overturn? Where and under what authority?

An elected body can overturn it, but that elected body is Congress. Basically some previous Congress passed a law saying "The EPA can turn up the heat on the frog, but can't turn it down". And now the EPA can start boiling the frog under a Democrat and the next Republican can't stop it without having a clear majority Congress also.

What is that law?

As for the EU, decision making has been moved pretty much entirely out of the remit of anyone who is elected,

I am not familiar with the full gamut of EU legislation, but in the area I am most familiar with professionally (bank capital adequacy), this is the opposite of the truth. In the EU, the bits of technical detail of bank capital regulation which are not expected to change a lot are included in the primary legislation (the Capital Requirements Regulation). You can see the key financial regulations on the European Banking Authority's Single Rulebook - "Regulations" and "Directives" are two types of EU primary legislation. The ratio of primary legislation to EBA rules implementing it is such that it makes sense to display the implementing rules as footnotes to the primary legislation.

EU regulations and directives are made by the European Parliament, which is elected, and by the Council of Ministers, which consists of the relevant minsters of the elected governments of the Member States (finance ministers in the case of banking regulation). It is a trope of anti-EU ranting that this is a smokescreen and that legislation is actually written by the Commission (effectively the EU executive). This is simply false. The Commission does have the exclusive power to produce the first draft of legislation, but the Parliament and Council have an unlimited right to amend it, and do so extensively. They are no more cut out of the process than the US Senate is cut out of the budget process by the Constitutional requirement that money bills originate in the House.

Regardless of the de jure situation, if the Commission had a de facto power to write banking regulations, the banks would spend more time lobbying it. I have spent many happy hours lobbying the European Banking Authority in person. I have worked on Powerpoint decks that were used by professional lobbyists to lobby the Parliament and Council. I am not aware of any serious attempt by my employer to lobby the Commission.

In most other jurisdictions, very much including the UK and the US, the basic structure is that the primary legislation effectively says "The regulators have the power to make bank capital adequacy regulations. They are required to take the following aims into account when doing so...", and then the entire bank capital rules are in agency regulations. When we lobby the UK authorities, we only talk to the PRA. The Treasury have to come and talk to us (which a particular gunner civil servant is keen to do) - since the Tory government cut free coffee in government offices, it is no longer worth our while to take the tube three stops to talk to them.

What controversial environmental decisions has the EU made? What Mr Kraut is probably complaining about is the increased cost of electricity in his country, which is entirely caused by his government's moronic decision to shut down perfectly safe nuclear powerplants before their intended shutdown date out of an irrational fear of nuclear energy. (Is that right, @Southkraut?) Last I heard, the EU was actually considering classifying nuclear energy as "green".

One EU policy I do object to is the promotion of "organic" agriculture, including occult agriculture, but I have literally never seen anyone else complain about this.

Edit: And this bullshit is also largely due to Germany, just look up a map of "biodynamic" agriculture by country. Beware Germans bearing ambitious plans to reshape the world.

Zero emission vehicles: first ‘Fit for 55' deal will end the sale of new CO2 emitting cars in Europe by 2035

As to your edit and general blame assigned to Germany: Yes.

Looking up newer information on this, it seems it hasn't actually been adopted yet. Apparently, it is being stalled by the transport ministers of Germany and a few other countries.

The person I was replying to was claiming these sorts of regulations are imposed unilaterally by unelected Eurocrats. This is clearly not true given that EU legislation requires approval by a qualified majority of the European Council, consisting of ministers from the member states. As demonstrated in this case, they can in fact block legislation from being passed.

@theory

Ministers are unelected bureaucrats, though.

Does that include the prime minister? Really then, who isn't an unelected bureaucrat?

To me at least, "bureaucrats" are usually non-political career civil servants, people who you rarely hear about in the news except in extraordinary situations, e.g. Fauci. Ministers are politicians, appointed directly by the parliament. They feature in the news regularly, their names are well known, and they get voted out regularly, albeit by the parliament and not by some kind of recall referendum.

Does that include the prime minister?

That one depends on the country.

Ministers are politicians, appointed directly by the parliament.

This is also not true depending on the country.

And appointments are not elections.

The thing is European democracies have a pretty diverse range of democratic control and procedures to form governments, so where say an Italian government might be mostly made of career politicians and MPs, a French one could be made almost entirely of party men and administrators who do not hold elected office.

I understand the point you're trying to make is that of the classical opposition between the civil service and elected politicians which is so prominently displayed in Yes, Minister. But I question the relevance of it these days and specifically in the context of an organ so removed from democratic checks.

Some of the people who sit on this Council could not be removed by any vote, and formally none of them sit on it by election. Calling it any sort of democratic body seems silly to me.

Someone else here mentioned one or two roundup threads ago that Germany has been pushing back on the plan because they were all for the ICE ban before Russia invaded Ukraine and cheap Russian gas was now no longer on the table.

I would think @SouthKraut is talking about "EU ministers pass 2035 car engine ban law", which is basically the same policy, rather than more distantly related one of energy in general.

Which has been scrapped?

Germany recently negotiated an exception for "synthetic fuels" which can mean practically anything.

Exactly, yes.

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