
Trump Unveils His Plan to Weaken Car Pollution Rules - okket
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/02/climate/trump-auto-emissions-california.html
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ajmurmann
It's incredibly hard to stay calm and reasonable in a discussion if someone is
actively moving the entirety of mankind to the brink of destruction.

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josefresco
This is "the argument" against fuel efficient cars. Although I think we all
know what this is _really_ about:

"First, people who buy fuel-efficient vehicles will end up driving more,
increasing the odds that they will get into a crash. Second, the fuel-
efficient vehicles will themselves will be more expensive, slowing the rate at
which people buy newer vehicles with advanced safety features. Third,
automakers will have to make their cars lighter in response to rising
standards, slightly hurting safety."

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maxxxxx
I don't really understand why people of a certain political leaning take
comfort in burning as much fossil fuel as possible and find all kinds of
excuses to justify burning more fuel. I really don't get it.

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mikeash
A huge chunk of the American electorate has given up on principles and is now
in a sports mentality where the only goal is to beat the opposing team. This
has been driven to extremes by eight years of a non-white President from that
team. The opposing team is against pollution and favors fuel efficiency, thus
they are for pollution and against fuel efficiency. That’s really all there is
to it. Look up “rolling coal” for the purest expression of this sentiment.

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onyva
The “wining” team, this time, didn’t really win, now did they? They lost by 3
million votes. Without going into what Russia did to tip this elections, which
were won by mere 70,000 votes in the 3 key states.

This is for sure not your usual right vs left style of governing. It’s the
right not accepting that they’ve lost. It’s the self righteousness of people
who think they have the right to govern, no matter what.

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mikeash
They won according to the rules of the game. Normal politics might say that
they ought to govern from the middle given how narrowly they won. But with a
team mentality, that makes no sense. It’s like saying the Super Bowl winners
should share the trophy because they only won by one point and the other team
ran the ball more yards. Does not compute.

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onyva
Rules of the game, really? You mean colluding with a foreign government
against your own people is playing by th “rules of the game”? Isn’t it exactly
the oppsite?

Whichever is the case with this narrow “win” they for sure did not get
manadate to foundentally change the USA. And this is without getting into
trump’s a non existing ideology of plan for governing. It’s not a government.
A government does not work against the interests of its people.

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mikeash
You were talking about losing the popular vote and explicitly disclaimed the
rest, and I was following along.

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onyva
Yet down voting me not making you sound very confident in your arguments.

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AnimalMuppet
_I 'm_ downvoting you. (Others are also.)

If you want to know why, I'll explain. You made a bad initial argument, which
seemed to be motivated by having a political axe to grind. Since then, your
replies have looked like someone who just wants to argue, but isn't actually
listening to what they're replying to. That's a "dialog" that isn't going to
contribute anything useful. All it adds is noise.

We try to avoid that kind of thing on HN. Hence the downvotes.

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24gttghh
>The Trump administration contends that, by promoting the manufacture and sale
of lighter cars, the Obama standards could lead to nearly 13,000 more auto
fatalities.

What is this madness‽ Light does not automatically equate to being unsafe.

Edit:

From: [https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/02/climate/trump-fuel-
econom...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/02/climate/trump-fuel-economy.html)

""This can potentially affect road safety in two big ways: On average,
smaller, lighter vehicles can be worse at protecting their occupants in an
accident. But lighter vehicles also cause less damage to other cars on the
road. The big question is which effect dominates.

Experts who have looked at this question have developed a rule of thumb: If
automakers are mainly reducing the weight of their largest vehicles, like
S.U.V.s and pickup trucks, then that makes the roads safer overall. But if
manufacturers were to focus more on reducing the weight of their smallest
passenger cars, that could be worse for overall auto safety, since those cars
would be more vulnerable in crashes with bigger vehicles.""

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rpiguy
It does not, but in the past the calculations to derive these numbers take
into account what happens when a small light car impacts a larger, heavier car
as well as the probability of this kind of crash happening. Numbers like this
are easily fungible too, the worst kind of statistics.

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tzs
Question: if they succeed in stopping California from having more stringent
pollution rules, could California partly work around that by making the annual
registration fee for cars depend on their emissions so that high pollution
cars would be penalized?

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sandworm101
It isnt as bad as a had thought. I had expected them to enforce a maximum, to
insist that the average be kept lower and penalties applied to cars that didnt
burn enough fuel. Those voices are out there.

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0xcafecafe
This was a good link in the article as well.

[https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/climate/what-is-
cli...](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/climate/what-is-climate-
change.html)

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rpiguy
It is great news for the US car industry, as all of the big three are highly
dependent upon the sale of trucks, SUVs, and larger cars. Glad to see this the
2012 rules were ridiculously stringent and burdensome and could ultimately put
larger vehicles out of the consumers reach. A lot of people's jobs are at
stake and the rust belt can't afford much more pain.

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24gttghh
Good! We don't need those monstrosities on the road threatening everyone else,
and pumping more pollution into our air.

