Myth: Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions Will Also Reduce Auto Safety.
Issue
To fight global warming, California adopted regulations limiting greenhouse gas emissions from cars, SUVs and pick-up trucks. The auto industry has sued in various forums to stop those regulations. When those lawsuits have not succeeded, the auto industry has tried to convince Congress and the Bush Administration to block California’s global warming efforts.
Myth
The auto industry repeatedly has claimed that California’s greenhouse gas regulations will cause a large scale job loss in the automobile industry.
Truth
There will be no large scale job loss in the auto industry as a result of these regulations. Rather, the economy will benefit, and jobs will be created because of the expansion of advanced automotive technologies in the U.S. markets.
In the course of litigation in California and Vermont, the auto industry has been forced to explain and justify its argument for job loss. Not only are there many cumulative errors in the math, but the auto industry’s analysis is based on a premise that is fundamentally flawed.
Any supposed job loss is entirely dependent on the auto industry’s assertion that General Motors, Chrysler, and Ford would choose not to sell any vehicles in the California market rather than comply with California’s regulations. This is entirely fanciful. Not only are over 1.5 million vehicles sold annually in California, but fourteen states – representing over 40% of the cars sold in the U.S. – have or will soon have adopted California’s greenhouse gas emission regulations. There is no way that these manufacturers can leave half of the U.S. market and still survive. They will not do so.
California’s regulations will require that manufacturers add new technologies to their cars and trucks. This will mean improved engines, transmissions, and air conditioning systems. Hybrid systems will expand. New alternative fuels will be used. All of these improvements mean new, additional jobs, both in manufacturing and from suppliers. There is no reason to think, and the auto industry has not shown otherwise, that those jobs won’t come to workers in the U.S.
The reality is that auto manufacturing jobs are tied directly to the ability of automobile companies to make good cars and trucks and sell them. Over the past 10 years, they have failed to do that, and auto industry employment has dropped precipitously. If manufacturers can stop that decline, there will be jobs. Building fuel efficient cars that people want to buy is one way to do that.
California’s regulations will also help expand the overall economy, because it will cost less to operate the new cars and trucks. With lower operating costs, consumers will have more money to spend. A leading University of California at Berkeley economist – whose state-of-the-art economic models are widely used – estimates that these regulations, adopted just in California, will produce an additional 70,000 jobs. That estimate was based on gasoline priced at only $1.74 per gallon. At the current much higher gasoline prices and with 40% of the U.S. adopting these greenhouse gas regulations, the job benefits will be even greater.
The bottom line: Jobs in the U.S. will expand, and not be lost, with California’s greenhouse gas regulations.