August 5. 1976
Page 25848
CLEAN AIR AMENDMENTS OF 1976
The Senate continued with the consideration of the bill (S. 3219) to amend the Clean Air Act, as amended.
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, I yield 10 seconds to the Senator from Washington.
Mr. JACKSON. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Joel Merkel and Wendy Davis be granted privilege of the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. MUSKIE. Mr. President, I understand the Senator from Colorado would like to begin his summary at this point.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Will the Senator suspend? We will try to have some order in the Senate. This is on 1609,and we would like to hear it.
The Senator from Colorado.
Mr. GARY HART. Mr. President, the dispute before the Senate on amendment No. 1609 is between 1 gram per mile versus my amendment which provides 0.4 gram per mile nitrogen oxide pollutants; 0.4 is the current law established by Congress in 1970. All my amendment does is keep the current law what it has been for the last 6 years.
What are the practical effects and the differences between 1 gram per mile and 0.4?
First of all, the National Academy says that difference may be the difference between meeting ambient air standards in various parts of this country.
Second, as these charts show, those on the left and right, there is a difference by the mid-1980's of about half a million tons a year of nitrogen oxides in the air.
That is important for only one reason. That is, that nitrogen oxides produce cancer. They produce cancer in the lungs of the people of this country. That is a very practical difference.
Third, there is an argument as to whether this standard can be met by automobile engines in this country and still maintain fuel efficiency.
The device I have in my hand, representatives of Detroit say, does not work. That is a catalytic converter which not only achieves standards I am proposing, but does so with a 10 percent fuel efficiency increase.
Mr. President, if there is one thing clear to the Congress of the United States, that is improvements in the area of clean air will not occur voluntarily. The improvements we have achieved in automobile emission standards have been because of the will of the Congress reflecting the will of the people of the United States.
If we leave to the automobile industry to do voluntarily, it will not happen.
The one question that the committee members have not answered is, why delay if the capability presently exists?
The capability presently exists. The current law is right. Retreat from the 0.4 standard established in 1970 is a retreat by the Congress of the United States from the standard established to protect the public health and environment of the United States of America.
That is not a question merely of people's jobs. It is not a question really of energy, both of which I think are irrelevant and immaterial and unsubstantiated.
It is a question of life and death.
Nitrogen oxides cause cancer. Four thousand people will lose their lives in this country next year as a result of the quality of the air they breathe. Four million work days will be lost because of respiratory diseases.
It is undisputed that the hazards to the lungs of the children of this country, of this generation and future generations, is being jeopardized by the quality of the air coming out of our automobiles.
We can change that. We can change it by a "yea" vote on this amendment. The technology exists. It can be achieved. The one thing lacking is the will and determination of the Congress of the United States.
That is what this amendment is all about.
Several Senators addressed the Chair.
Mr. CRANSTON. I would like to just testify as a Californian that in California the standards that the Senator from Colorado requires in his amendment are now being met.
They are being met by Volvo. But it is not only a foreign car that can meet those standards. We have been absolutely assured that Ford will market a 1978 Pinto that will meet the standard the Senator from Colorado would hold us to.
Why should we retreat, therefore? It is false that American industry cannot meet these standards.
Another point, the standards are being met in a way that provides a 10 percent gain in fuel, in miles per gallon.
So there is absolutely no reason, based upon experience in my State, not to go along with the Senator from Colorado.
Mr. HUMPHREY. If the Senator will yield, just to make the record clear, because I strongly support the Senator's amendment.
The Senator has a device on his desk—
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The time of the Senator from Colorado has expired.
Mr. GARY HART. A threeway catalytic converter.
Mr. HUMPHREY. Made in the United States?
Mr. GARY HART. Yes. It costs less than $50.
Mr. MUSKIE. I like the arguments of the Senator from Colorado and I am going to use them in conference with the House to defend either the committee position or the Hart position, whichever the Senate approves, because they are applicable to both, as this chart shows.
This chart shows that with respect to auto emissions of nitrogen oxides, the total emissions at the present time are 3.6 million tons per year. The committee bill would take that down to 1.4 million tons per year in 1985, a reduction of two-thirds.
The Hart amendment would take it down to 0.9 million tons the same year.
So the difference between the two is that.
Second, turning attention to the second chart, the top line shows that the present level of nitrogen oxide emissionsin the country are 24 million tons per year. The big part of the movement down is stationary sources of nitrogen oxide.
The committee bill will take that line down to the bottom red line by 1990, reducing the 24 million tons to 9 million tons.
The Hart amendment will take it down to the bottom line, No. 5. So the big problem is not the nitrogen oxide in automobiles, but that from stationary sources.
Why, then, did we take the committee position? Take the Volvo automobile. It was developed under a 1.5 NOx standard in California. A 1.5 was sufficiently tough to force the technology so that Volvo did better than 1.5. It did 0.4. The committee's1.0 can do the same thing. Why, then, do we not go to 0.4? Because 0.4 has been a controversy ever since 1970. The automobile industry has used it to drag its feet, to delay movement on the other automobile pollutants. So we undertook to establish a legitimate target, 1.0, which will enable us to develop that Volvo technology, which is a four-cylinder engine, one car, one model; to transfer that to all cars, all models and all engine sizes by 1980 is a problem, about which the automobile industry has persuaded enough people in the last 6 years so that we made less progress than we should have on carbon monoxide, on hydrocarbons, and other automobile pollutants.
Mr. PASTORE. Will the Senator yield?
Mr. MUSKIE. I yield.
Mr. PASTORE. Does the Senator maintain that his bill is stronger than the House bill? For the conference, would we be in a better bargaining position to accept the Hart amendment and come back to where the Senator stands?
Mr. MUSKIE. My problem is not only to deal with the House but to deal with the Senate. The only way I have been able to do it in the past is to take a position which I can defend. It is for this reason that I can defend this position. I do not suggest that Senator HART not get votes, because that will help, as long as he does not get too many. [Laughter.]
Mr. GARY HART. The Senator said my amendment would go into effect in 1980. It would not go into effect until 1982. It is 6 years away.
Mr. MUSKIE. I apologize.
Mr. GARY HART. It is not that we are demanding the automobile industry to meet this standard tomorrow. It is 1982.
Mr. MUSKIE. May I add another correction? The choice is not between 0.4 NOx and 1.0. The bill sets up 0.4 NOx as a research objective and requires the National Air Quality Commission to report by 1977 on 0.4 Nox.
There is still some doubt as to the contribution that a 0.4 NOx automobile makes to the degradation of public health. We need to answer that question in order to take the argument away from the automobile companies, and we need to give a little more time to force the technology. The committee bill will do that and the Hart amendment will, too.
I think the automobile industry has demonstrated a capability of persuading people to go along with its foot dragging on this technology because they were able to persuade them that 0.4 was unreasonable; that it was based upon an error in the statistical information which produced the standard in the act, and, as a result, they have that argument; 0.4 is a legitimate research objective.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. All time has expired.
Mr. BUMPERS. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to extend the time for 4 minutes, with 2 minutes on each side.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection? The Chair hears none. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. BUMPERS. This Senator is slightly confused between what the Senator from Maine has just said about the Volvo automobile and what the Senator from California said a moment ago about the Pinto and the Volvo. Does the Pinto meet California standards? Is that essentially the same standards that the Volvo fourcylinder automobile has now met?
Mr. MUSKIE. The California standard is 1.5.
Mr. GARY HART. Ford Motor Co. has announced that they intend to meet the California standards using this technology in its 1978 Pintos.
Mr. RIBICOFF. Mr. President, I rise in support of Senator GARY HART's amendments. A significant deficiency of S.3219 is the substantial relaxation of the automobile emission standards required for cars produced in 1978 and afterward. This provision of the bill seems to me to signal a retreat from the commitment to cleanse the environment. This relaxation in emission standards will have a disastrous effect on the air we breathe and on public health in general.
I am especially troubled, Mr. President, as the State of Connecticut reportedly has the second most severe problem in the country for photochemical oxidents, which are primarily caused by motor vehicles. At times this form of pollution exceeds Federal standards established to guard the public health throughout Connecticut. Clearly, some meaningful action must be taken to resolve the situation.
One Hart amendment, simply requires manufacturers to comply with auto emission standards 1 year earlier than required by S. 3219. I believe we would be committing a grave mistake by postponing the imposition of strict standards for hydrocarbons and carbon monoxide for 1 year, from 1978 to 1979, and to delay until 1980 a nitrogen oxide emission standard which is six times weaker than levels now being achieved in California under a more stringent law.
The other Hart amendment requires more stringent nitrogen oxide standards, clearly a national necessity.