That’s the viewpoint of some automakers looking at California’s pending carbon-dioxide emissions laws. Scheduled to take effect in 2009, the law, known as AB 1493, would effectively require automakers to build cars that average 40 mpg in the state. Burning gasoline produces CO2 in direct proportion to a vehicle’s fuel economy.

Under federal law, California is allowed to set its own emissions standards, because it had such standards before the federal Clean Air Act was passed. Other states have decided to follow federal standards, or California’s, but not set their own. That’s where the argument comes in.

Each time California enacts a new emissions standard, it must get a waiver from the Environmental Protection Agency, which sets federal standards. Under intense lobbying from the auto industry, the EPA has denied the waiver for law AB 1493, and California has sued. (This is only one of many lawsuits over the law.)

The automakers argue that the California law would result in a patchwork of state-by-state fuel economy regulations that they could not meet. However, car makers do build different models for California emissions states now. Fuel economy would be more related to vehicle size than the emission standards.

That isn’t what the bill requires. Further, it wouldn’t be legal under federal law. But it also may not be that simple. Both California and federal fuel-economy requirements are averages, based on the average rating of all cars a manufacturer sells. Under federal law, that means all cars sold nationwide have to average out to the federal 35 mpg standard. If the California law went into effect, it would mean all cars sold in the state would have to average out to the state’s approximately 40 mpg standards. Simple enough so far.

But if Vermont, for example, or Texas were to sign on to the California standard, automakers would have to sell a similar proportion of pickups, small cars, and large and small SUVs there that they do in California.

And automakers say that is a problem. They call it "individual compliance," as distinct from individual standards. Automakers now sell, and consumers demand, a higher proportion of large pickups in Texas. On a national level, the relatively low fuel economy from those trucks can be balanced by selling more small cars in Vermont. That wouldn’t work under the California law.

It might be easy if automakers could just sell the same amount of pickups, for example, in every state. But this ignores the fact that consumers’ needs and wants vary by region. Fuel-economy laws have gotten enormously complex. And, as you can see, they are difficult to administer and difficult to with which to comply.

We think that the right direction is for automakers to make all of their cars—including pickups and SUVs – more fuel efficient. Over the years, government standards have been fairly weak and did little to push the development of increasingly fuel-efficient vehicles. As it has happened every time we’ve seen a spike in fuel prices, though, recent market forces have hastened fuel saving technology progress and impacted the new-car model mix.

Feedback time
We’re interested in your thoughts. Are fuel economy standards worthwhile? And should California be allowed to enact its CO2 emissions limit law? What do you think of CAFE, which has tried to do the same thing on a national level?

Some ground rules for the comments: No fair claiming that CO2 is not pollution; that California shouldn’t be able to dictate to the rest of the nation; or (as the automakers have) that AB 1493 is not an emissions law. These issues have already been decided by federal courts in favor of California. (On the other hand, California lost a lawsuit claiming automakers should pay the state billions of dollars in damages for CO2 emissions.)

—Eric Evarts