This is great news. The Obama administration is tightening national fuel standards, in line with the program California has been trying to enact since 2002.
Money quote:
"...inaction [on fuel standards] has been a factor in the current dire state in which General Motors and Chrysler find themselves. The Japanese automakers are far ahead in developing smaller, more efficient vehicles, although they, too, will have to adjust their product lines."
The article describes how California had applied for a waiver, as far back as 2002, to lax federal fuel standards, but industry and the Bush administration WOULD NOT LET THEM ENFORCE TIGHTER STANDARDS. Get that--industry, and their supposed allies in office, disallowed environmental measures in an attempt to protect industrial profits. And they ended up not only harming the environment, but crippling the US auto industry.
How tragically ironic! If the auto-makers hadn't insisted so vehemently that they be allowed to continue making gas-sucking behemoths, the Japanese wouldn't have run them out of business.
Which leads me to conclude that 1) The US automakers are retarded and/or 2) the actual "industry" opposing those regulations wasn't so much the automakers, but the oil companies. Probably, it's a little of both.
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