Congress Can Make Those Weirdass New Postal Trucks Electric, So Do That, Congress!
And why does DeJoy still have a job, anyway?
One of the central planks of Joe Biden's climate strategy, going all the way back to the 2020 campaign (and its origins in Jay Inslee's terrific climate proposal), is the idea that the federal government should use its huge purchasing power to help move along America's transition to clean energy. It's right there in the Day One part of the Biden Climate Plan: Biden will reduce carbon emissions by, among other measures,
Using the Federal government procurement system – which spends $500 billion every year – to drive towards 100% clean energy and zero-emissions vehicles.
That's a terrific idea, except for the part where some parts of the federal government, like the US Postal Service, are designed to be so insulated from executive interference that they can create serious mischief when they're led by a rightwing asshole like Donald Trump's pet postmaster general, Louis DeJoy. Under Screwy Louie, the Postal Service announced in February that its $6 billion fleet of next-generation mail delivery vehicles would be mostly powered by Guzzolene, plus 5,000 electric-powered vehicles, or just 10 percent of the new vehicles.
This is a huge step away from environmentally responsible purchasing. With roughly 230,000 vehicles, the Postal Service fleet makes up about a third of all federally owned vehicles. The new mail trucks are likely to have a service life of decades, too, which means they could still be burning fossil fuels long after most vehicles on the road are clean.
Happily, DeJoy's fossil-fuel fixation doesn't have to be the final word.
As Abigail Weinberg reports at Mother Jones, Congress has the power to step in and keep the federal government from purchasing a fleet of gas-guzzling trucks that only get 14 miles per gallon — as long as the AC isn't running. (With AC, that drops to just 8.6 MPG.)
Instead of settling for giving thanks that such a pathetically wasteful vehicle is marginally more efficient than the aging, '80s-vintage trucks they'll replace (8 MPG, no AC to make a difference), we could instead demand that DeJoy's Folly be stopped before it goes into service next year, and that the government make a genuine investment in clean, electric trucks instead.
When DeJoy announced the new fleet would use dirty old tech, he said in a statement that the "commitment to an electric fleet remains ambitious given the pressing vehicle and safety needs of our aging fleet as well as our fragile financial condition" — basically, claiming it simply can't be done because the USPS is too poor, but maybe the mix of infernal combustion and electric trucks might change if more funding became available. Heck, maybe somewhere down the line, gas models could be converted to electric, as if the cost of retrofitting vehicles would somehow make economic sense.
DeJoy's decision to go with gas-powered trucks might not even save the USPS any money beyond the initial purchase price, since, as a study from the Atlas Public Policy research group pointed out, the gas vehicles get such shitty mileage that EVs could save billions of dollars over the life of the fleet — especially since, as America gets off the fossil fuel teat, fossil fuels will of necessity become rarer and more expensive.
In addition, as Weinberg points out, postal delivery seems like a perfect role for EVs, since they generally drive short, designated routes every day and park in the same lot every night. An electric fleet of postal vehicles would mean USPS would no longer burn 110 million gallons of fuel every year, according to environmental group Earthjustice.
That's where Rep. Gerry Connolly (D - Virginia) would like to offer an intervention: He's introduced a bill that would block the USPS from entering into a contract for new postal vehicles unless 75 percent of the fleet is electric. Disappointingly, the bill is titled the ‘‘Green Postal Service Fleet Act of 2022,’’ instead of my preferred alternative, the "ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING THE CLIMATE IS AN EMERGENCY Act of 2022." It could be amended, perhaps.
Connolly told Weinberg that
Weaning ourselves off of fossil fuel dependence is a major part of trying to cope with greenhouse gas emissions. Replenishing [the postal fleet] with vehicles that are electric and hybrid would go a long way towards helping to change the nature of fuel in US vehicles on the roads.
The Postal Service has already entered into a contract with Wisconsin's Oshkosh Defense, so if Congress wants to procure a green USPS fleet, it needs to act fast.
“When Mr. DeJoy puts his mind to it, he can marshal Republican votes for the Postal Service,” Connolly said. “There’s an appetite in Congress, if they’re willing to work with us, to fund this to ensure that they have a fleet that’s a 21st century fleet that embraces new technology and that is environmentally sensitive.”
Now, it's true that some rural routes might be longer than the likely range of current electric trucks, but only about five percent of postal routes are more than 70 miles long. If a quarter of the new fleet needs to be fossil-fuel powered, as Connolly's bill would allow, there'd be plenty of gas-powered mail trucks to cover them. And EV range keeps improving, too, so the Postal Service could start out with a smaller number of gas vehicles and replace them as longer-range electric trucks become available.
You may ask yourself, "Why is Louis DeJoy still my not-beautiful Postmaster?" The simple answer is that he can't be shitcanned until the Senate confirms Joe Biden's appointees to the Postal Service Board of Governors, which we can only assume will happen ... eventually.
[Mother Jones / CNBC / Vice]
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Joe Manchin Unveils Exciting New Reason To Screw Over Electric Vehicles!
Oh, look what he did with that football he was holding.
A couple weeks back, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia) was talking about how he'd sure like to help Democrats get something done in Congress before the midterms, like maybe a spending plan that would roll back parts of the 2017 tax cuts and then use the new revenue to reduce the deficit and address climate change. As you'll recall, we were cautiously cautious in whatever optimism we could manage, given that Manchin owns a coal company and said the lesson of Russia's invasion of Ukraine is that we need at least as much fossil fuel expansion as green energy in order to tackle the climate emergency. Never mind that fossil fuels are causing the emergency.
This Fucking Guy Again
Hey Look! Joe Manchin's Holding A Football!
By Sheer Coincidence, Joe Manchin Made Half A Million Dollars Last Year Off Of Coal
Yup, identification confirmed: This is the right Joe Manchin all right, not a lookalike.
In his latest very Hot Take on climate — entirely too hot to prevent further planetary warming — Manchin said at an energy conference in Houston last week that he just doesn't see why we'd want to switch to electric vehicles at all, because China, don't you see.
I'm very reluctant to go down the path of electric vehicles. [...] I'm old enough to remember standing in line in 1974 trying to buy gas – I remember those days. I don't want to have to be standing in line waiting for a battery for my vehicle, because we're now dependent on a foreign supply chain – mostly China.
Seems a hell of a reach to use the prime example of overdependence on oil to argue we should rely more on oil, but then, it's Joe Manchin. On Christmas eve, visions of drilling rigs dance in his head.
Manchin went on to explain that he knows a thing or two about history, and then to get history exactly, almost completely wrong. He said he has a "hard time understanding" why the government would spend money on building out a network of EV charging stations, apparently forgetting that was in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law that he insisted on passing separately from the rest of Joe Biden's agenda.
"I've read history, and I remember Henry Ford inventing the Model-T, but I sure as hell don't remember the US government building filling stations – the market did that," he said. The crowd erupted with applause.
So let's, as they say, unpack this latest load of "the market did it" hooey, and the rest of Manchin's nonsense here. (Because we can't possibly wait that long, we'll spoiler you, re: the gas stations, oh yes government certainly did.)
For starters, there's the straight out weirdness of his objections to a central plank of the separate infrastructure bill he championed.
Wonkette Vox Splainers!
Infrastructure Bills Got You Confused? Not Anymore Suckers, We Will Vox Splainer You!
GOP Convention’s ‘We Built It!’ Theme Night To Be Held In Arena That Government Built
Beyond that, like all those dipshits at the 2012 GOP convention chanting "WE built that!" (In a venue mostly built with government funding), Manchin seems awfully blind to the role that government policies and funding played in making sure we're running around on fossil fuels. Like, has he never even seen Who Framed Roger Rabbit? A key plot point in that cartoons-in-real life movie accurately reminded America that Los Angeles used to have a terrific trolley system that went belly-up — with help from General Motors and Big Oil (and yes, the reality was more complex than a simple villainous plot).
It's also weird that Manchin would simultaneously try to stir up fear that China will monopolize the market for EV batteries and mock the very idea of government investment in EVs, given that, as S&P Global notes in reporting on his comments, China's "dominance of mineral mining and refining is thanks to years of investments and policy that has catapulted the country to become a world leader in less than 10 years." Chinese free markets certainly didn't build that. The article also notes that, in addition to the funding for EV charging stations, the Infrastructure Law Joe Biden signed also "includes $7.5 billion to develop domestic supplies of key minerals" to build the very EV supply chain Manchin says we need.
The moribund Build Back Better bill, we'd note, includes even more funding to develop clean energy manufacturing and supply chains, as well as the generous tax credits that will help Americans buy EVs. Oh, we keep forgetting — EV subsidies are bad, because Manchin thinks government never ever did a thing to boost the internal-combustion auto industry. To which we say, BULLSHIT.
Wonkette Mega-Listicles!
What's In The Build Back Better Bill? Your Servicey Wonkette SUPER MEGA-LISTICLE!
Joe Manchin Whines Build Back Better's EV Tax Credit Is Too Nice To Unions
It's a ridiculous fantasy to claim America's automotive infrastructure burst forth in free market glory (possibly from the forehead of Milton Friedman), as anyone who's spent five minutes reading about the Interstate Highway System knows. The federal government literally built that, pouring billions into the planning, routing, and construction of the interstates, which reshaped American cities, exacerbated racial inequality, made suburbs possible, and radically changed everything about American business, manufacturing, and leisure.
Hell, those who profited from the creation of the Interstates were delighted to inform us that, with federal and state funding, they were reshaping American life. While looking for an image to use in this piece, I found this amazing little film funded by the Caterpillar Tractor Company, which hired Walter Cronkite to talk up the glories of the nation's enormous road-building spree, all for the low low price of $50 billion in 1956 dollars (about $451 billion today, cheap!).
Like any corporate propaganda, the film leans hard on the positive, insisting the Interstates will be unambiguously beneficial. But when Cronkite says the signing of the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act in 1965 was a fundamental turning point in American history, that wasn't hyperbole at all.
The movie's a fun lunchtime watch, too, both for the "we'll eliminate traffic jams and deadly accidents" boosterism and the copious footage of bulbous late-'50s dream cars.
To put it bluntly, if Manchin thinks the modern auto industry developed purely in response to market forces, his memory is smoggy. If anything, the auto, oil, and construction industries shaped the massive government spending projects that created much of the future we now live in, for good and ill.
We'd also note that the auto industry is definitely poised for a similar boom in EV development. Ford and GM are both investing heavily in building a domestic EV battery industry, so for Crom's sake, the federal government has every reason to help that move forward more quickly.
Wonkette Does Business!
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At the Washington Post, Yale political science prof Jacob Hacker, author of American Amnesia, notes that that
the modern roadway system, including the ubiquitous fuel station, was as much a creature of government as any major feature of our economy in the 20th century. [...]
Road planners, both state and federal, mapped out major roadways, purchased or seized land, and, in many cases, set up the well-spaced fueling franchises necessary to ensure that people could get where they wanted to go speedily. [...] Much of this was funded by gas taxes.
In short, without that “foundation of government investment and regulation,” we just plain wouldn't have cars or highways like we do now. No matter how much Manchin may want to pretend otherwise.
And as ever, Manchin very deliberately hides the central point: We need to electrify and get off fossil fuels rapidly, to keep the planet habitable for large mammals that like to get around in boats and nice (electric) cars. That's true even for large mammals who don't know, or prefer to have their own American amnesia about, their own history.
[S&P Global / WaPo / Curbed LA / image: Periscope Film on YouTube]
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Truck! Truck! Post About Truck! Biden Make Big Truck Not So Stinky! Truck!
This is a big truckin' deal.
The Biden administration yesterday rolled out new proposed air pollution limits on tractor-trailer trucks, delivery vans, buses, and other heavy vehicles in a much-anticipated Environmental Protection Agency rule that marks the first time in 20 years the government has tightened emissions standards for heavy vehicles. The EPA said in a statement,
The proposed standards would reduce emissions of smog- and soot-forming nitrogen oxides (NOx) from heavy-duty gasoline and diesel engines and set updated greenhouse gas (GHG) standards for certain commercial vehicle categories. This proposed rule would ensure the heavy-duty vehicles and engines that drive American commerce and connect people across the country are as clean as possible while charting a path to advance zero-emission vehicles in the heavy-duty fleet.
The new, higher standards would require a 90 percent reduction in nitrogen oxide emissions by the 2027 model year, and the EPA estimates the health benefits from cleaner air would, by 2045, "exceed its costs by billions of dollars."
EPA Administrator Michael S. Regan pointed out in the statement that 72 million Americans, largely people of color and those with low incomes, currently live near truck freight routes, and have higher rates of heart and lung problems than average. The new standards would cut total US emissions of nitrogen oxides by as much as 60 percent by 2045, resulting in greatly improved air quality, not to mention reducing the greenhouse gases that are heating the planet and causing climate change.
Donald Trump liked to pretend he was driving a big-boy truck, beep-beep! Joe Biden, an actual human adult in the room, is making sure those trucks are cleaner and friendlier for the environment.
The new standards were announced Monday by Vice President Kamala Harris, who also announced a number of other federal actions on clean transportation,
including the expenditure of $5.5 billion to help states purchase low or zero-emission transit buses, and $17 million to replace diesel school buses with electric versions in underserved communities.
Those programs were part of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law passed last fall.
The EPA says it estimates the following annual benefits will come from the cleaner air we'll have by 2045:
• Up to 2,100 fewer premature deaths
• 6,700 fewer hospital admissions and emergency department visits
• 18,000 fewer cases of asthma onset in children
• 3.1 million fewer cases of asthma symptoms and allergic rhinitis symptoms
• 78,000 fewer lost days of work
• 1.1 million fewer lost school days for children
Not surprisingly, the trucking industry is very unhappy with the prospect of making other people's children healthier and keeping the planet habitable for large mammals like elephant seals and truck drivers.
“This new standard simply may not be technologically feasible,” said Jed Mandel, president of the Truck and Engine Manufacturers Association, an industry group. “We’re worried about the cost. There is a potential of adverse impacts on the economy and jobs. Nobody wants to see union jobs laid off. Regular lunch-pail, blue collar workers.”
The prospect of union jobs for workers building the new cleaner engines, and the vehicles they'll go in, don't count because those aren't necessarily the people currently making and driving the trucks that are choking us. Also, the trade industry for smaller trucking firms said it would be bad for the stability of the supply chain, as if the disruptions currently resulting from the pandemic will continue another five years. Still, the costs of retooling the trucking industry for green energy sure sounds to us like the kind of thing Congress could help with as part of future climate spending.
The New York Times points out that following the last EPA rules on truck emissions, in 2001, national nitrogen emissions were cut by 40 percent. We bet the trucking industry predicted it could never survive those tighter emissions standards, too — no industry ever exclaims, "Oh fun, new regulations!"
Read More:
What's In The Build Back Better Bill? Your Servicey Wonkette SUPER MEGA-LISTICLE!
For 'Climate Day,' Shirtless Joe Biden Washes Electric Car In White House Driveway
With progress stalled on the Build Back Better bill, which includes about $555 billion in climate spending over 10 years, the administration is pursuing climate action through the executive branch, which Biden said he planned to do from the start. It would of course be better to get a bill through Congress, since that would be harder for some future wingnut president — or the current wingnut Supreme Court — to reverse.
The new emissions rules are the first in a three-year series of initiatives the EPA calls the "Clean Trucks Plan," which aims at using regulations to reduce pollution from heavy vehicles like trucks and buses, and to get the transportation industry as a whole moving to zero net emissions of greenhouse gases. In addition to the tighter limits on nitrogen oxides, the EPA plans to tighten emissions of greenhouse gases for
subsectors where electrification is advancing at a more rapid pace. These sectors include school buses, transit buses, commercial delivery trucks, and short-haul tractors.
Industry is already moving in some promising directions with electric vehicles. Ford is pushing its new E-Transit line of delivery trucks by emphasizing that vehicle purchasers can also get help with installing charging stations and logistics software, as well as a new network of charging stations Ford is building. Like the F-150 Lightning electric pickup, the E-Transit vans will be available with a bunch of electric outlets built in, for use on job sites.
Read more: Maddow Devoted Half Her Show Last Night To TRUUUUUUUUCK, And It Was Great
Amazon is rolling out its new Rivian electric vans this year, too, with plans for 10,000 to be on the road by the end of the year, and 100,000 electric delivery vans by 2030. And while Amazon is kinda evil, we have to agree with Motor Trend: The vans themselves look like "smiling blue whales."
In conclusion: Cleaner trucks! Cleanest trucks! Healthy lungs for children and their families trucks! Good for the climate trucks are best trucks! Less vroom-vroom, more humm-humm!
[EPA / NYT / Motor Trend / Car & Driver]
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Hey Look! Joe Manchin's Holding A Football!
Good grief!
When Sen. Joe Manchin says “Here’s the thing. I’ve always been open to talking to people okay? But they just don’t want to hear,” you may want to just run away screaming instead of reading the rest of the Politico article in which the gentleman from West Virginia outlines his ideas for an alternative to Build Back Better that he'd be willing to help pass. Or at least have your running shoes already on and snugly tied while you listen.
In his State of the Union address Tuesday, President Joe Biden called for passage of at least some of the planks in Build Back Better, the sweeping package of climate and social spending programs that Manchin single-handedly killed off last fall, after nearly a year of forcing the ambitious plan to be whittled down from $3.5 trillion over 10 years to $1.7 trillion, to meet various demands from Manchin and from Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Arizona). Shaping legislation to please Joe Manchin didn't work out so great last year, but Manchin insisted that was because the narrowed bill wasn't actually what he'd made clear he wanted anyway.
But with midterms coming, Democrats really are looking for additional legislative wins to run on. That's in addition to last year's big American Rescue Plan that revitalized the pandemic economy and kept millions of Americans whole, and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which is building bridges and highways and, yes, creating jobs. So, as Politico points out, Democrats are listening, cautiously, to what Manchin says he would definitely support in a reconciliation package that could be passed by Democrats alone in the Senate, since some guy insists the filibuster must absolutely be preserved.
So what does Manchin say he wants?
As he laid out in his interview with Politico, it's more of an outline than a full package. One minimum requirement for him is that any package of tax increases and spending would have to be "permanently funded." That was the sticking point Manchin suddenly discovered last year to sink Build Back Better: To fit the budget totals Manchin demanded, the bill was rewritten to only fund some programs for a few years, instead of the full 10 that Manchin decided was the eternal touchstone of good government.
So to fund whatever goes into the Manchin package, the plan would
need to start with prescription drug savings and tax reform. He envisions whatever revenue they can wring out of that as split evenly between reducing the federal deficit and inflation, on the one hand, and enacting new climate and social programs, on the other — “to the point where it’s sustainable.”
“If you do that, the revenue producing [measures] would be taxes and drugs. The spending is going to be climate,” Manchin said.
“And the social issues, we basically have to deal with those” with any money that’s left, he added.
And if you're wondering exactly where the details are, there aren't any. That's the outline of what Manchin says he can live with. He insists that that's always where he's been, and that the rest of the party knows it, but "They just basically think that I’m going to change."
Still, it would be something, and hooray for Manchin saying he wants to invest in climate, and ... um.
Oh yeah, there actually is one more thing, it turns out. About those measures to help the climate? Manchin, who we will remind you owns a coal company, wants to be sure they don't help the climate too much:
Manchin, who also chairs the Senate Energy Committee, said that the climate portion of any theoretical bill will look different now that Russia is invading Ukraine. He’s calling for the U.S. to ban oil imports from Russia and ramp up domestic energy production, including fossil fuels. He would support big clean energy investments in a potential deal, he said, but wants domestic oil, gas and coal production to still be a big part of the mix.
SHEER COINCIDENCE! By Sheer Coincidence, Joe Manchin Made Half A Million Dollars Last Year Off Of Coal
So sure, let's invest in clean energy, but to get that, we absolutely have to negate any progress on climate by also investing in the fossil fuels that have caused the climate emergency. (And yes, that's a long-running theme with Manchin, too.)
Manchin says that including both clean and dirty energy in a climate plan is simply an "all of the above" approach to energy. Cool! Perhaps we should talk about trying an "all of the above" approach to treating a COVID patient: Give them antiviral pills, infusions of the one remaining monoclonal antibody treatment that works on Omicron, and regular injections of brand new coronavirus variants.
Manchin dismissed the notion that you can't slow greenhouse emissions through expanded production of fossil fuels, scoffing, “They say ‘Manchin doesn’t care … he’s killing the environment.’ I’m not killing anything.” Look he denies there's anything crazy about his approach, and if you make him mad, he'll wish you into the oilfield.
Beyond that flaming chunk of carbon-spewing illogic, Politico also addresses another potential roadblock to the half-formed package: Manchin's partner in No, Kyrsten Sinema. As you'll recall, she took her own axe to Build Back Better last year, insisting there could be no actual reversals of the 2017 Trump tax cuts, which forced the downsized Build Back Better bill to rely for funding instead on surtaxes and a new corporate minimum tax. Asked about Manchin's new idea, Sinema's office said that to pay for what Manchin wants, all that's needed is the revenue mechanism already in the truncated version of Build Back Better.
“Any new, narrow proposal — including deficit reduction — already has enough tax reform options to pay for it. These reforms are supported by the White House, target tax avoidance, and ensure corporations pay taxes, while not increasing costs on small businesses or everyday Americans already hurting from inflation,” said Hannah Hurley, a spokesperson for Sinema.
So that sounds like a "no" on prescription drug price reforms?
Not surprisingly, Manchin's idea didn't win a lot of praise from progressives Politico spoke to. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) said, of the idea that new revenues should go to deficit reduction instead of to social programs, "I don’t care what he wants. We’re talking about what the American people want. He doesn’t like it, he can vote against it, that’s his business." Rep. Barbara Lee (D-California) said she hoped Manchin might still come around, despite his insistence that everyone else needs to come around to his way of thinking.
Others said, fine, let's see what we can pass and just bloody pass it:
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) put it this way: “There’s so much that we all agree on, that we ought to be able to get a deal.” And Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.), the deputy chair of the Progressive Caucus, said she’s “open” to Manchin’s energy proposal provided “it’s paired with a real meaningful commitment, and actual movement.”
Our personal favorite reaction came from moderate Sen. Mark Warner (D-Virginia), who could only come up with
"I was hoping you would were going to, like, ask me to expound about Ukraine.”
“I’ve got a lot of respect for him. And hope springs eternal,” Warner said.
Manchin wouldn't say directly whether he's discussed his ransom demands proposals with Biden, but said there's been "informal back-and-forth" and that "Different White House people reach out, and we talk from time to time."
And if this latest idea goes nowhere, Manchin can certainly insist that whatever objections he pulls out of his ass were actually clear to everyone else from the beginning.
[Politico]
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