The president of Volkswagen’s American unit came under withering criticism on Thursday at a congressional hearing looking into the automaker’s admission that for years it knowingly skirted federal emissions standards.
The world is filled with rapidly advancing technologies, and the transportation fuels sector is no exception. A few more innovations like these, and our oil addiction will be a thing of the past.
The next eight years will be critical for the world’s climate and ecosystems, and if you vote for a climate skeptic for president, you’d better talk to your kids first, because you will have to answer to them later.
More than a decade ago, the EPA helped develop a technology that ultimately was used by an independent laboratory to catch Volkswagen’s elaborate cheating on car emissions tests. But EPA used the technology primarily to test trucks rather than passenger cars because such heavy equipment was a much bigger polluter.
In Europe, where three-quarters of the world’s diesel cars are sold, concerns over rising air pollution from diesel motor tailpipes have fueled calls for a radical rebalancing of the region’s road fuel mix for some time.
The Obama administration said Monday it has finalized the terms of a record $20.8 billion dollar settlement with BP PLC over the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
The U.S. government’s testing underestimates how much fuel cars will burn on the road, and the problem has gotten worse, according to a study released on Thursday.
The Environmental Protection Agency will propose tightening limits on smog-related pollution Thursday, according to individuals briefed on the decision, but the new standard will fall short of what environmentalists and public health experts had recommended.
By now, the depth of Volkswagen’s deception is clear: The German automaker deliberately misled American regulators by installing software on 11 million vehicles that reduced emissions during testing, but allowed the emissions to increase by 4,000 percent once they got out into the real world where people live and breathe.
Don’t give the environmentalists all the credit (or blame). Where 2008 was a great year to start drilling, 2015 is a great year to quit.
