March 29, 1973
Page 10267
MUSKIE SPEECH CALLS FOR GET TOUGH POLICY WITH DETROIT
Mr. BIDEN. Mr. President, there has been much discussion recently of the feasibility of meeting the requirements of the 1970 Clean Air Act. This is a matter which deserves the thoughtful consideration of all of our citizens. Senator EDMUND MUSKIE, chairman of the Senate
Subcommittee on Air and Water Pollution, responded today to the critics of this act who have suggested that the act be amended and that Congress and the public have asked too much from the automobile manufacturers. I believe that Senator MUSKIE has presented his argument cogently and that the points that he has made should be carefully considered.
Senator MUSKIE pointed out that:
The industry has had the opportunity for a decade to clean up the automobile with only general supervision from the Federal Government. These minimal controls now appear to have been inadequate. The harsh truth is that German and Japanese auto companies have developed more new control technology and have contributed more to the protection of America's health than have General Motors, Chrysler and Ford.
In reference to the auto manufacturer's response to the Clean Air Act requirements for the development of a clean car, Senator MUSKIE said that:
Apparently American auto companies have decided to substitute politics for engineering and public relations for technological progress.
Because the auto manufacturers have made no secret of their intentions to seek a change in the law, Members of Congress should examine carefully what Senator MUSKIE had to say:
Any proposed amendments to the Clean Air Act must improve our capacity to ensure that the goals of the Act are met ... The Congress will have to consider imposing standards of engine design, performance and fuel economy, and we will need to examine the arguments for improving the competitive structure of the industry.
I ask unanimous consent that the full text of Senator MUSKIE's remarks to the Environmental Writers Association be printed in the RECORD at this point.
There being no objection, the remarks were ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:
REMARKS BY SENATOR EDMUND S. MUSKIE
Fifty years ago, the first Henry Ford wrote an autobiography that set out the principles he said had guided him to success. "All that I have done," he wrote in My Life and Work, "is to endeavor to evidence by works that service comes before profit and that the sort of business which makes the world better for its presence is a noble profession."
The mass-produced automobile, the creation of Henry Ford's genius, has made the world better. Cheap, rapid transportation has broken down distinctions of class, of geography, of wealth. It has opened up opportunities that now extend into a space and a future we can only dimly imagine.
But America – the most advanced and dependent automotive society in the world – has now reached a time of testing with the automobile. We are faced with the fact that the private car involves grave public risks. We are being forced to examine what Henry Ford put down as a truism: "The machine is the symbol of man's mastery of his environment."
The examination has now reached a critical phase in the issue of standards for automobile exhaust emissions. The question is before the Environmental Protection Agency. It is before the auto manufacturers. It is before the Congress, and it is before the public.
A few weeks ago I discussed the problem with the heads of Ford, Chrysler and General Motors. Today I want to set out my views to you and ask you to reflect on the choices America must make and the forces at work to determine their resolution.
While the immediate problem is the question of extending for one year the deadlines on auto emission levels set by the 1970 Clean Air Act, it is necessary to begin this discussion with some of the background of that legislation. As the principal author of the Act, I am anxious to put on the record the concerns that must govern the implementation of the law.
This year Americans will buy 11 million new trucks and cars. They will spend over $40 billion with the U.S. auto manufacturers whose activity now constitutes roughly one-fifth of our economy. Americans will receive, in return, the means to get to and from their jobs, their schools, their families, and their recreation, the vehicles to carry their goods from maker to buyer and the machines to till their farms and harvest their crops.
Essential as the automobile is, however, its costs must be weighed. One is the cost in fuel – 65 billion gallons of petroleum products just for private cars in a year, and 40 percent of all our petroleum consumption committed to use in motor vehicles. Another is the cost in health – the area I will concentrate on today.
Using air quality data of the Public Health Service, whose validity was only recently reaffirmed by new studies by EPA's National Environmental Research Center we have to conclude that the automobile is a danger to the Nation's health. This year, automobile exhaust will account for two-thirds of the carbon monoxide, half of the hydrocarbons and two-fifths of the nitrogen oxide that pollute our air. And that pollution will be concentrated in our great cities.
The NERC report reached the following conclusions
PARTICULATE MATTER
"All recent evidence has strengthened the research base upon which the Administrator made his judgment. Thus, the present standards are not deemed unreasonable and it is not recommended that they be changed at this time."
PHOTOCHEMICAL OXIDANTS
"In light of old and new evidence to date, the present primary national air quality standard for photochemical oxidants of 160 µg/m² (1.08 ppm) maximum concentration for one hour is reasonable. The evidence does not warrant a different standard."
NITROGEN OXIDES
"Based on ... existing health intelligence, the margin of safety provided by the primary NO2 standard of 100 µg/m² (0.05 ppm) is adequate ... Present evidence does not compel us to suggest a change in the existing standard."
CARBON MONOXIDE
"In view of [the] relatively small margins between present standards and observed health effects, it does not seem that existing standards are unduly restrictive and it does not seem prudent that they should be raised. Although the margins are relatively small, the carboxyhemoglobin levels that will result from adherence to the standard is sufficiently close to background, that no lowering of the standard is recommended either."
The EPA data, when applied to the urban concentrations where more than 70 percent of America's population lives, prove the existence of a clear and present danger to health. In 67 metropolitan areas automobile-related pollution produces a level of air quality which is considered unsafe. In many of these cities, emissions from motor vehicles are responsible for 80 percent of the urban air pollution.
In Baltimore, for instance, motor vehicles produce 96 percent of the carbon monoxide which, on city streets where children live and play, often goes higher than 50 parts per million. Ten parts of carbon monoxide per million dulls thought. One hundred parts per million brings on dizziness and headaches. One thousand parts per million kills.
And the situation in Baltimore is not exceptional. On North Capitol Street, just a few blocks from the Senate Chamber, the carbon monoxide levels often rise to 100 parts per million, twice the maximum health limits for factory workers' safety. In Chicago, the standard of 48 parts of carbon monoxide per million in any one hour is exceeded 48 times a year, and the eight-hour standard is breached 713 times annually. In Washington itself the eight-hour standard is violated 99 times a year.
Of course, one of the worst hit areas in the Nation is the Los Angeles Basin. And it is from there that the pressure has grown for a national response to a problem that never was simply a local concern.
In the fifties, California legislated a requirement that the development of workable pollution control mechanisms – add-on devices – must be followed by the installation of those devices on vehicles sold in that State. By 1964, California was able to certify that three independent manufacturers had developed functioning add-on devices, and the State then required their installation on 1966 model cars.
For years the auto manufacturers had been saying the technology necessary for such emission control was not available. They also argued that the law was unnecessary as they could clean up motor exhausts without such pressure. But within weeks of California's firm stand, they announced they had the means to comply without resorting to add-on devices.
Nevertheless, they opposed the decision of the Congress in 1965 to set Federal standards, applied in 1968, for exhaust levels from new car engines. In 1967, Congress made the Federal standards preemptive over those individual states had set. The Congress made an exception only for California and in return for the preemption of State laws, Congress insisted that Federal controls be sufficiently strict to protect areas with the worst pollution problems.
Studies by the Public Health Service showed that the law was not producing the desired air quality results. The automobile industry was making little progress in developing either a clean conventional engine or a viable alternative. The Nixon Administration called auto and oil industry officials to a White House meeting in 1969, and from that session emerged an agreement for stiffer emission standards in 1975 and a set of goals for clean cars by 1980. These goals and standards, however, fell short of the real requirements. Because of the used car problem, they would not have removed automobiles as a major contributor to air pollution until 1990.
The Congress found the timetable too slow. The Clean Air Act of 1970 required instead that the White House goals be made standards and that they be applied in 1975 and 1976. The Act required in 1975 a 90 percent cut below 1970 emission levels of hydrocarbon and carbon monoxide and set for 1976 a 90 percent reduction below the 1970 levels of emissions of nitrogen oxide.
That Congressional determination rested on four considerations.
First, we weighed the necessity of protecting public health against the disputed facts of economic or technical feasibility, and we decided that public health could no longer be compromised by these lesser considerations.
Second, we insisted on independent monitoring of the facts; the manufacturers had, until then, nearly monopolized the true measure of their own efforts and of the technology available to them.
Third, we provided that the deadlines could only be extended by one year and only by the Environmental Protection Agency. It could grant the delay after a finding that the standards were not technologically feasible, that the manufacturers had made a good faith effort to comply, that the National Academy of Sciences could find no available alternatives and that an extension of one year would serve the public interest.
Finally, we established the principle that as long as America could not live without the automobile, it required an automobile it could live with. The burden of producing such a car – without specific inhibitions on the kind or size of engine – was left with the industry itself. And so long as the industry did not want to be told how to manage that burden – so long as the industry insisted that the internal combustion engine should not be abandoned, that the car or engine size need not be restricted, or that no specific fuel economy should be required – it was enough to tell them simply that it had to be done. So we set standards for performance, not for design.
Nearly three years have passed. And now the auto manufacturers are asking for both the one-year extension and for a relaxation of the law itself.
They say the public health data on which the 1970 determination rests are "arbitrary."
They say the danger is not so great as to require such strict reductions in emission levels.
They say that existing technology cannot effect such reductions.
They say the technology that could do the job would cost too much.
And, they say, it would produce a car that consumed more fuel with less drivability; a car that would not sell.
So the issue is joined. It is appropriate that we examine the conflicting claims and the available evidence. The evidence is detailed and technical. Complicated as it may be to present, it is still essential to understand.
The reports issued during the last several weeks by the National Academy of Sciences and by the Environmental Protection Agency provide the kind of information we need to evaluate the results of the industry's efforts. The information is discouraging.
It indicates that the industry has attached more importance to preserving the internal combustion engine than to finding the best and most effective means of meeting the standards.
It strongly suggests that the industry has failed to seriously consider alternative engine systems as an approach to solving the automotive emissions problems and meeting the statutory deadlines.
The reports of both the National Academy of Sciences and the Environmental Protection Agency conclude that the 1975 standards for hydrocarbons and carbon monoxide emissions might be met by using catalytic, add-on systems coupled with the internal combustion engine (ICE) – the approach followed by each of the major domestic manufacturers.
The reports also indicate that the standards can be met by using alternative engine systems, the Wankel rotary engine, the diesel engine, or the stratified charge engine – the approach followed by several foreign manufacturers such as Mercedes-Benz, Honda, and Mazda.
But now the domestic manufacturers argue that the passage of time has eliminated the alternative engine approach to meeting the 1975 standards as far as they are concerned.
With respect to the 1976 standards for nitrogen oxides, both reports conclude that the prospects are still hazy; but both reports also indicate that the prospects for meeting those standards with the alternative engine system are clearly better than are the prospects for success with the catalytic add-on systems.
Most importantly, however, the NAS report also compared the catalyst and alternative engine approaches in terms of cost, durability, and fuel economy. These comparisons make clear the price the public will have to pay for the industry's decision not to develop alternative engines.
The Report states that the dual catalyst system pursued by the domestic manufacturers "is the most disadvantageous with respect to first cost, fuel economy, maintainability, and durability. On the other hand, the most promising system – the carbureted, stratified-charge engine – is superior in all these categories."
According to Philip Handler, President of the Academy, the high costs for the catalyst systems are dominated by the fuel penalty associated with such systems. "These costs," he said, "in dollars and in depletion of fuel reserves, are so great that they should serve as a national incentive to hasten the development of reliable lower-cost alternatives to the dual catalyst system as a solution to the problem of emissions control."
But those prospective costs do not appear to have had that effect. Neither the higher costs to the consumer nor the greater drain on our energy resources has discouraged the U.S. auto manufacturers from choosing the catalyst patch-up over alternative engine systems. And the public will pay the price for that choice. The harsh truth is that German and Japanese auto companies apparently have developed more new control technology and have contributed more to the protection of America's health than have General Motors, Chrysler or Ford.
In the midst of compiling this record with respect to the 1975 and 1976 standards, the companies have repeatedly ignored and violated current requirements of the law. Some of the most flagrant violations occurred in 1971 when Ford shipped 200,000 cars to their dealers in violation of the law, and in 1972 when Ford committed 350 separate criminal violations of the law for which it recently paid a $7 million fine.
Several other companies are involved in an action which began in March of 1972 when EPA sent a memorandum to all the auto manufacturers stating the clear intent of the Clean Air Act that vehicle certifications granted by EPA would apply for only one year. EPA stated: "The statutory language limits to 365 consecutive days the period of time (production period) during which a manufacturer may produce individual models."
EPA revealed on June 19, 1972, that despite this clear direction, ten auto companies planned to produce models under 1972 certifications for periods longer than 365 days. The ten auto companies were: Alfa Romeo, Avanti, Chrysler, Citroen, Ford, General Motors, Lamborghini, Maserati, Mercedes-Benz, and Nissan.
EPA chose not to enforce their March directive, but instead wrote a new memo saying that a year is not 365 days but is any "model year" the auto companies choose to make it. Thus, the manufacturers' preferences prevailed over the clear intent of the Congress.
The most outrageous violations were reported in July, 1972. EPA learned that auto makers were installing emission control devices on 1973 cars which would shut off automatically under many normal driving conditions.
Specifically, it was reported that emission control systems would shut off when the engine is idling, when the outside air temperature was below the minimum test level of 68 degrees, or when major accessories such as air conditioning units were operating. None of these faults were discovered during regular EPA testing because the manufacturers had rigged their cars so that shutoff devices would not be discovered by EPA's tests. And when EPA ordered the removal of these devices in January of this year, the auto makers protested that their production schedules would be disrupted.
We have examined what the industry has done. Let us now look at what they are saying.
Apparently, American auto companies have decided to substitute politics for engineering and public relations for technological progress. The past several months have seen the beginning of a major effort on their part to discredit the requirements of the Clean Air Act and the basis on which it was enacted.
In questioning the basis of the law, for example, General Motors has spent thousands of dollars for special canned presentations, including a slide show and accompanying speeches, in which the Clean Air Act standards are called "arbitrary," "unrealistic," and "overkill." General Motors' memory is very short; the standards in the Act were virtually identical to standards to which the auto industry agreed at the White House meeting in November, 1969. These standards were further supported by extensive studies discussed during hearings on the Clean Air Act in 1970, and have been confirmed again by the studies of the National Environmental Research Center.
Chrysler recently sent to their dealers a slide show, a speech, and pamphlets attacking the Clean Air Act. In the pamphlet, Chrysler argues that "nature produces up to fifteen times more of the automotive emissions than man." That is not the whole story according to Reid A. Bryson of the University of Wisconsin's Institute for Environmental Studies:
"It is true that nature produces more carbon monoxide than man does, but not in the high concentrations that are found on city streets. Nature does produce more hydrocarbons than man, but not in high concentrations in the air. In fact, we burn naturally produced hydrocarbons in our automobiles, but we concentrate the wasted part in the air of our cities. It is totally meaningless to argue that because nature produces more carbon monoxide over the whole world (including the oceans, which are a major source) that concentrations of 80-110 ppm in some sections of our cities are of no consequences. The methane produced by a herd of flatulent elephants in Africa has nothing to do with whether there is too much hydrocarbon in the air of Washington, D.C. The argument is even more absurd than telling the condemned man in the electric chair not to worry because lightning kills far more people every year."
And a recent Chrysler newspaper advertisement tells us that: "The automobile industry has not been asleep. We were working hard to reduce harmful emissions from cars some twenty years before the Clean Air Act." Chrysler apparently has forgotten that the auto industry was sued by the Justice Department in 1969 for an illegal conspiracy to suppress the development of emission control technology. "The automobile manufacturers", said the Justice Department, "collectively did all in their power to delay [the] research, development, manufacturing, and installation of control devices from 1953 through the middle 1960's."
The industry has made three principal arguments in attacking the requirements of the law:
First, the companies have argued that the 1975 and 1976 standards will lower the fuel efficiency of new cars, require greater fuel consumption, and substantially worsen the energy crisis.
According to the NAS, the catalyst approach the industry has chosen over the alternative engine approach will involve increased fuel consumption. But the truth is that we pay even greater fuel penalties in exchange for vehicle size and accessories than for pollution control devices. And there is no need to pay any fuel penalty at all for emissions control, according to the NAS; in fact, two of the alternative clean engine systems – the diesel and the stratified charge – are more fuel efficient than the 1973 internal combustion engine.
The Environmental Protection Agency has described in detail the relationship between fuel economy and pollution control devices, vehicle size and accessories. Their report indicates that automatic transmissions involve a 5-6 percent fuel penalty, emission control systems an average penalty of 7.75 percent, and air conditioners an average penalty of 9 percent (up to 20 percent on very hot days); vehicle weight increases over the past few years have caused penalties of up to 150 percent.
The second major argument which the industry has advanced is that the technology to meet the 1975-76 standards does not exist. It is the same argument that has been made every time new automotive emission standards have been considered over the last fifteen years; and every time, when the crunch has come, new technology has appeared.
The truth is that the technology does exist; we just don't know whether it exists for the domestically manufactured internal combustion engine. General Motors mass produces a diesel car in Europe which meets the 1975 standards. Mercedes-Benz, Mazda and Honda expect to meet the 1975 standards without serious effects on current performance levels with the diesel, the Wankel and the stratified charge engines, respectively. In fact, EPA has said that Honda will meet the 1975 standards with fuel economy 12 percent better than comparable 1973 vehicles, and that Mercedes will meet the 1975 standards with fuel economy 75 percent better than conventional 1973 vehicles. Honda has also publicly stated that they expect to meet the 1976 standard. In addition, a Mercedes-Benz diesel apparently has been tested and found to meet the 1976 standards.
The third argument is that plant closures will be inevitable unless the government relaxes the enforcement of the law. Thus, the industry is trying to use the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of workers as a huge bargaining chip in its struggle with the government.
But the truth is that if plant closures should be threatened it will be because of bad business decisions of company management, not requirements of the Clean Air Act.
That is the context in which the manufacturers are petitioning for more time. In light of the past performance of the auto industry in resisting, evading, and circumventing laws to control automotive emissions, I hope that the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency will examine the manufacturers' request with at least the same degree of skepticism which has marked the manufacturers' approach to the law. In any event, we all must examine carefully the implications of the industry's apparent failures or limited success, and consider the possibility of even stricter controls on automobile design and performance.
The Administrator of EPA is confronted with a difficult task. In deciding whether or not a one- year extension is warranted, the law requires that the industry show that control of technology is not available, that good faith efforts have been made, that an extension would be in the public interest, and that the National Academy of Sciences has not found available alternatives.
The public interest determination will not be easy.
It will require more than an analysis of the impact of the possible suspension of operations of one or more manufacturers.
It will require more than an analysis of the impact of delayed introduction of new models, or of the impact of importing platinum for catalysts from Russia or South Africa, or of the impact of an imperfect technology on energy consumption.
Any test of the public interest must also include an evaluation of what the public can buy in exchange for a one-year extension.
The industry asserts that a commitment to catalytic systems to meet a 1975 deadline is not in the public interest. They urge an extension of time to perfect the catalyst system.
The Administrator must go beyond that premise. He should determine whether the industry's emphasis on catalysts has forced a direction which is not in the public interest, and whether there is any real possibility that a one-year extension will in fact facilitate the development and application of alternative systems.
The industry has argued that an extension would provide time to develop more fuel-efficient control technologies or engine systems. The Administrator must determine whether or not that can in fact be the result of an extension.
The industry has argued that an extension would provide an opportunity to improve the durability, reliability, and drivability of the new vehicles. The Administrator must determine whether or not an additional year can in fact achieve that purpose.
In short, the Administrator must determine not just what the industry says it hopes to do, but what the industry is willing to commit itself to do. If the Administrator finds that the law does not permit sufficient flexibility to pursue those kinds of commitments, he should make appropriate recommendations to the Congress.
The auto companies have indicated that they intend to seek a change in the law regardless of the Administrator's decision on the pending extension request.
As far as I am concerned, any change in the law will be even more sharply focused on what must be done to achieve a clean car.
What this country is entitled to is a fuel efficient, clean car which is durable, drivable, and economical. That must be the objective of the industry.
Until now we have attempted to reach that objective by setting performance standards for the industry rather than design standards. We have depended on their evaluations of their own technology. But, now we have learned that our reliance on the industry was mistaken.
When the auto manufacturers argued against Federal adoption of California's auto emissions standards in 1964-65, the Managing Director of the Automobile Manufacturers Association argued that "controlling potential pollutants at the engine, instead of with accessories added to the exhaust pipe, would in the long run, prove to be technically most sound and economically most feasible." In other words, the industry told us that engine design changes were preferable to add-on devices such as catalysts. But in 1973, in asking for an extension of the 1975-76 deadlines, the manufacturers are making the opposite argument. Yet they have never seriously explored alternatives to the internal combustion engine.
In light of this reluctance, the Congress must consider what alternative engine systems are available, what their possibilities and limitations are, how much it would cost. In this connection, the Congress will have to consider imposing standards of engine design, performance and fuel economy, and we will need to examine the arguments for improving the competitive structure of the industry.
Any proposed amendments to the Clean Air Act must improve our capacity to ensure that the goals of the Act are met.
We may have to allow States such as New Jersey and California, which have developed responsible emission control programs on their own, to assume a greater role in controlling emissions from automobiles operating within their boundaries.
We may have to upgrade the Federal role in supervising the development and manufacture of devices relating to the emission control systems.
We may have to broaden the prohibition and criminal penalties under the Act to deter any alterations of emission control systems – not merely those performed by manufacturers or their dealers.
And, finally, we will have to assure that auto workers are not victimized by irresponsibility in the executive offices.
We come back then to what Henry Ford said about his "noble profession". In another portion of his autobiography he spoke of "something sacred about a big business which provides a living for hundreds and thousands of families", and he said, "continuance of that business becomes a holy trust."
But he added the following words: "The employer is but a man like his employees and is subject to all the limitations of humanity. He is justified in holding his job only as he can fill it."
The top officials of the American automobile industry rightly maintain that the health of their industry is crucial to the Nation's prosperity. That reality does not put them beyond the law, nor does it justify their dictating the terms on which they will operate.
Over the past half century this industry has demonstrated ingenuity and enterprise in fashioning an automobile which both whetted and catered to the consumer's appetite for comfort and convenience. We have asked it to assume the high responsibility of turning that same capability to the service of the country's health.
And what is their response? – they are saying that the disease is not grave enough to warrant the costs of cure. And, using their enormous weight in the productive sector, they appear to be issuing all of us an ultimatum. They say, in effect, that the price of protecting public health from air pollution is an unthinkable dislocation of their industry and the American economy – that the public health is inconsistent with the health of the industry.
The American automobile industry has been on notice for a decade that air pollution is a grave national concern, that the motor vehicle is a major contributor to the crisis and that Congress is resolved to impose the requirements necessary to preserve the nation's health. The industry has had the opportunity for a decade to clean up the automobile with only general supervision from the Federal government; standards have dictated performance, not design. These minimal controls now appear to have been inadequate. The further steps that I have suggested may be necessary – because we must solve the automotive air pollution problem, and solve it without making the public pay for the industry's mistakes.
So it falls to industry – most of all because of its vast importance – to add responsibility to responsiveness. The size of the automobile industry itself requires of its leaders the highest degree of public responsibility.
During the 1970 consideration of the Clean Air Act in the Senate, I said, "Detroit has told the nation that Americans cannot live without the automobile. This legislation will tell Detroit that if that is the case, they must make an automobile with which Americans can live."
To that I would only add one more thought from Henry Ford. "Our invariable reply to 'It can't be done,'” he wrote, is “Go do it.”