The Natural Resources Defense Council, a top national environmentalist group, is threatening to sue the Trump administration over its coming clean car rollback, but for now it wants its supporters to pile the pressure on automaker CEOs to prod the president for them.
“NRDC is fighting back hard against Trump and [Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott] Pruitt’s attacks on clean car standards. We’ll even take our fight to the courts if we have to. But right now, we need your help to go straight to the source — and straight to the top,” said Rhea Suh, the group’s president, in an email to supporters obtained by the Washington Examiner.
Suh wants supporters to send an email, using an online form, to the auto CEOs of General Motors, Ford Motors, Fiat Chrysler, Toyota, Honda, Nissan, Hyundai-Kia, Volkswagen, Mercedes-Benz, and BMW Automobiles, telling them that their cursory support for Trump’s proposed action is the wrong direction for consumers and their bottom lines.
“While gas guzzlers may be cheaper to produce, drivers will end up paying much more in fuel costs to gas up their less-efficient vehicle,” reads the form email NRDC wants sent out. “Your company has publicly stated its support for clean car standards in the past. So please stand up for what we all know is right: Call for the preservation of existing strong clean car standards and urge the Trump administration to stop its dangerous rollback scheme.”
Suh’s note to supporters follows EPA’s release of its midterm evaluation of fuel efficiency and clean car rules, which stated that it would not be pursuing the more stringent 54 miles per gallon standard by 2025 that the Obama administration and the auto-industry agreed to years ago.
President Trump ordered the previously finalized Obama-era midterm review to be scrapped in response to automakers and their trade group, the Automotive Alliance, calling for a redo. The industry argued that the Obama administration did not take into account higher sales of SUVs and light trucks due to low fuel prices and other demand factors.
“Here’s the thing: Trump and Pruitt’s rationale is that scrapping clean car standards will reduce the cost of vehicles for manufacturers, and create a boon to consumers,” Suh said. “What they don’t account for is the extra cash consumers will shell out at the pump to power less fuel-efficient cars.”
Suh told supporters that many of the car companies have given “lip service to supporting strong clean car standards,” while simultaneously lobbying Trump and Pruitt “to gut these standards.” She urged supporters that now is the time to “[c]all them out for their hypocrisy — tell car companies to act to halt these rollbacks.”
She even linked Pruitt’s recent condominium scandal to the EPA’s proposed auto rule rollback.
“Everything Pruitt touches these days seems to turn into scandal, and this is no different,” Suh said. “Steven Hart, the fossil fuel lobbyist whose wife owns the now-infamous $50-a-night luxury apartment where Pruitt stayed in D.C., represents the American Automotive Policy Council, which itself represents the car companies pushing Pruitt — yep, you guessed it — to roll back clean car standards.”
NRDC is one of the supporters of a campaign to oust Pruitt called #BootPruitt.
