Kerry's push for higher fuel-efficiency standards may hurt him in Michigan

[Feanorcurufinwe]

Presidential candidate John Kerry's past efforts to raise fuel-efficiency standards could make it tough for him to win over some Michigan voters in the Democratic caucuses next Saturday. The state is home to the Big Three automakers and more than a quarter of a million residents who earn their paychecks working for automakers and auto suppliers. The auto industry is so important in Michigan that its largest city, Detroit, is known as the Motor City.

Kerry is infamous in the auto industry for his fight to raise fuel-efficiency standards on cars and light trucks enough to produce a fleet average of 36 miles per gallon by 2015, a dramatic increase from the current 27.5 mpg now required.

<snip>

Kerry's insistence on higher CAFE standards has made him the auto industry's "nemesis," according to one industry insider. Although other Democratic presidential candidates have spoken of the need to improve gas mileage, the senator's record is keeping many in Michigan's congressional delegation from deciding whether to endorse him until they learn more about how he plans to treat the auto industry if elected president.

<snip>

Former Gov. James Blanchard, who's helping run Kerry's Michigan campaign, said Friday that automakers have nothing to fear from a Kerry presidency. Kerry's wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, toured the North American International Auto Show in Detroit in early January as a show of support for the industry. <snip> "The reality is, John Kerry believes, as I do, and as most thoughtful people do, that you can have an improving environment and a growing economy," Blanchard said.
http://www.freep.com/news/statewire/sw92143_20040131.htm

For perspective, here is a portion of an interview with Grist Magazine:

Grist: It's interesting to me that unlike other candidates, you've actually gone to Iowa, for instance, which has a strong United Auto Workers base, and argued for CAFE standards, putting yourself in conflict with what we traditionally think of as anti-environmentalists.

Kerry: You have to tell the truth and let the chips fall where they may. But the truth, in this case, should be appealing to UAW's workers: I believe I can put them to work. I believe I can have them working making cars; they can just make cars that are more efficient. It's not that hard. We can make cars that use biomass ethanol, cars that use hybrid-electric engines, that get 100 miles to the gallon by just being smarter. Somebody has to lead us there.

Grist: So you have the same message for, say, an autoworker in Iowa as you would for a card-carrying environmentalist in Portland, Ore. -- this message that new, clean industries can energize the marketplace and save the environment at the same time?

Kerry: The message is the same: We can create jobs and people don't have to fear good environmental practices and we can show people how we'll create the jobs and in fact they'll be better off. I'd rather sell more American cars that are fuel-efficient than have people turn to Japanese cars and German cars, and right now they are out-producing us in this area. So the way to sell the American cars is get efficient. I'm willing to provide incentives that help people do that.

Grist: How do you consider yourself different from other candidates on the environment?

Kerry: This fight is such a part of who I am; it's not just an issue on my resume. I think I have the longest, strongest, clearest, most accomplished record on the environment of any of the candidates running. I began in 1970 when I spoke at Earth Day. I was chairman of Earth Day New England in 1990. I chaired a governor's task force on acid rain when I was a lieutenant governor and we developed a national platform for acid rain. I've been chairman of the Oceans and Environment Subcommittee of the Commerce Committee. I've rewritten our fisheries laws, our marine mammal protection laws, our plastic pollution laws, our flood insurance protection laws, our coastal-zone management laws. I've lead on tuna/dolphin safety issues, on banning driftnet fishing. I've been to all the major conferences -- Rio, Buenos Aires, Kyoto, The Hague -- on global warming. I led the fight to stop Newt Gingrich from attacking the Clean Air and Clean Water acts in 1996, and I've led the effort in the Senate to stop the drilling in the Arctic wildlife refuge. I put together the first-ever sustainable development conference in Asia. I am proud of my record of accomplishment on the environment.
http://www.gristmagazine.com/maindish/kerry092303.asp

Kerry convinced folks in Iowa that they don't have to make a phony choice between jobs and the environment and he can do the same in Michigan.

[bloom]

1. I don't see how better fuel standards hurt

the automobile manufacturers. They would still be making cars. :shrug:

[Feanorcurufinwe]

6. Exactly, and cars would be more competitive in the market.

If we built a 100 mile per gallon car, you can bet we'd be exporting a lot of them. And chances are that the high technology infrastructure to produce those cars would not be available anywhere else so these jobs would be hard to move overseas.

The essence of Kerry's message is forward looking and synergistic on the environment, national security, jobs and the economy. His call to 'go the Moon right here on Earth' in a challenge to America to discover the alternative energy technologies that we will need to begin to make the transition beyond fossil fuels. All the candidates talk about alternative energy, but with Kerry's environmental record, he speaks the most convincingly. And he's the only one with a real way to fund such an effort, with his proposal for an energy trust fund (paid for by gas and oil royalty payments that Bush is trying to have eliminated) that would spur development of renewable energy.
http://www.johnkerry.com/issues/energy/

Save the Earth -- dump Bush
In a slashing interview, environmental leader Bobby Kennedy Jr. denounces the administration's "crimes against nature" and discusses the Democratic presidential pack, the dawn of Arnold's California reign -- and his own political future.

<snip>
You charge in your Rolling Stone article that Bush is the worst environmental president in American history.

Yes, that's true. And he's far worse than No. 2, who's Warren Harding. Based upon the fact that we have 30 major environmental laws that are now being eviscerated. All of the investment we have made in our environmental infrastructure since Earth Day 1970 is now being undermined in a three-year period of astonishing activity.

<snip>
What about the Democratic Party? Isn't it part of the problem too? Democratic politicians receive money from many of these same corporate polluters. And Al Gore certainly failed to make the environment a major issue in the last presidential race, even though he was supposedly Mr. Environment.

Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's because most of the candidates do not know how to explain these issues in a way that makes them relevant to the average voter. And in fact they have extraordinary relevance to average people. We're not protecting the environment for the sake of the fishes and the birds; we're doing it because it enriches us. It's the basis of our economy, and we ignore that at our peril. The economy is a wholly owned subsidiary of our environment. It also enriches us aesthetically and recreationally and culturally and historically -- and spiritually. Human beings have other appetites besides money, and if we don't feed them, we're not going to become the beings that our Creator intended us to become.

When we destroy the environment, we are diminishing ourselves and we're impoverishing our children. And our obligation as a generation -- as Americans, as a civilization -- is to create communities that give our children the same opportunities for dignity and enrichment as the communities that our parents gave us. And we cannot do that if we don't protect our environmental infrastructure. And that's really what this is all about.

So why didn't Al Gore go near this issue in the 2000 race?

That was a great disappointment to me. I urged him to do it. And I believe he would be president if he had.

<snip>
You've endorsed John Kerry in the 2004 race. Do you think he'll champion the environment more boldly than Gore in his campaign?

I think he already is; he's already framed this as his issue. I like all of the Democratic candidates and they're all relatively good on the environment. Actually, I don't know anything about Wes Clark on this issue, I haven't talked to him. But I have good friends who have and they say he's expressed strong feelings on the environment. So I think all the Democratic candidates are in the right place.

But Kerry has the best record of any senator; he has a 96 percent lifetime rating with the League of Conservation Voters. This has been a passion for him since he got into public life. He was the Massachusetts organizer for Earth Day in 1970, and he has fought hard for fuel efficiency standards, which is now the holy grail of the environmental movement. He's been the one consistent champion on that issue.

I've known Kerry almost all my life and he's an outdoorsman, he loves being on the water, he loves fishing. I've spent a lot of time on Nantucket Sound with him. Last summer he called my brother Max and asked him to come to Wood's Hole to go windsurfing with him, and they ended up windsurfing all the way from Wood's Hole to Nantucket, which is 45 miles, over open ocean. And that's pretty good for a 56-year-old guy. And he wasn't calling a press conference or anything. He just did it because they got into the water. It's genuine.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2003/11/19/bobbykennedyjr/index.html

[blm]

7. exactly, bloom.

Funny thing is this will be twisted by some here at DU that Kerry is giving in to special interest...the environmental groups. heheh.

[DieboldMustDie]

8. How is it that environmental groups are a special interest?

Doesn't everyone breath air and drink water? :think:

[David Dunham]

2. Kerry Can Beat Bush in MI, which has 7.2% unemployment rate

[SheilaT]

3. Isn't it astonishing

that the right thing can be the wrong thing?

That's the kind of thing that makes me completely furious, the notion that, Oh, no, we can't have more fuel efficient cars because then auto workers will lose jobs! Oh, no, we can't shut down buggy whip assembly lines because buggy whip makers will be out of a job!

[sandnsea]

4. Energy Tech Manufacturing

If the unions get behind that, it'll offset any fuel standards stuff.

[WiseMen]

10. Need real political education or we will forever be trapped by

special interests.

[IndianaGreen]

5. Kerry will say that his support for CAFE is really a vote for Hummers

Kerry is the Great Explainer!

[Raya]

9. Will be Great to have a President who didn't Compromise his Principles

[krkaufman]

11. CAFE standards are a national security issue

All Democratic candidates need to band together on this one. We need higher fuel efficiency, and we need to make it a national security priority.

Can you imagine what the $200 billion Bush will have spent on Iraq could have done in assisting Detroit in pushing fuel efficieny upward? The techology exists today for a 40MPG SUV, but Detroit's fighting against it (as are Michigan's Democratic Senators).

[Feanorcurufinwe]

12. Well that's part of the argument Kerry is making.

[maggrwaggr]

16. $200 Billion is a lot of R&D dough, even for these guys

Energy dependence. Can you put a price on that?

[Sensitivity]

13. Too bad for Kerry, Good for Dean

[sandnsea]

14. Dean doesn't support higher standards??

You think that's good?? I thought we were going to change the country. CAFE standards are critical to that effort.

[maggrwaggr]

15. Gee, I think only the CEOs would give a shit about that

that's how much the press is under the spell of the corporations that they can't even think, for a moment, of how actual voters might think. Oh, no, what will the CEO's think? (shudder shudder)

[Wells]

17. No way around kid glove treatment....

..when you're talking about the Big 3, who have the resources to elect their choice, or rather prevent from being elected any candidate they see as unmallable.

The last CAFE standards, passed during the Carter era, progressed US carmakers up to foreign standards that were gaining US market share.

Don't disregard GM's research toward the Hydrogen Fuel Cell and so-called "Hy-wire" technologies, which are completely ridiculous. Hybrid-drive technologies will always remain superior to hydrogen fuel cell.

Yet, billions to GM for dangerous, impractical car toys "they know" will never be mass produced.

If Kerry exposes GM's Hy-wire, hydrogen fuel cell car Hoax, he'll start an uprising in Michigan. YEAH!

[Raya]

18. And Dean is Slamming Kerry for legal $2000 contributions