Divergent Interests Seek Fuel-Economy Compromise
DETROIT -- Even as the auto industry and environmental groups gird for another political fight over fuel economy, private discussions are under way to work out a truce.</br></br>The Big Three auto makers, the United Auto Workers union and environmental activists are negotiating to try to come up with a joint proposal for what they have come to conclude is the most realistic way to improve the fuel economy of the U.S. automotive fleet: a big package of federal subsidies designed to seed a consumer market for vehicles that go farther on a gallon of gas.</br></br>Though the longtime antagonists are far from a deal, the fact that they are negotiating at all marks a big shift, suggesting each of them has decided the political impasse in Washington over fuel economy is contrary to its interests. For the auto industry, an intensifying political battle over the fuel consumption of sport-utility vehicles has become a public-relations nightmare. For the union, the specter of a shift toward newer, more-efficient vehicles raises worries about job losses for its members.</br></br>For environmentalists, the realization is setting in that a severe toughening of the federal government's fuel-economy rule is a political nonstarter. Therefore, some of them are concluding, the only way to get substantial improvement in the fuel economy of the U.S. fleet is to spur market demand for more-efficient vehicles. That is a tough task in a country where gasoline prices, adjusted for inflation, remain at historically low levels. But it is precisely the tactic the auto industry has been endorsing all along.</br></br>"Many of us want to solve the problem and get to a solution," said Ashok Gupta, director of the air and energy program at the Natural Resources Defense Council, one of the environmental groups involved in the discussions. "So you have to think out of the box and try to break the gridlock."