Trump terminates mileage rules, bills it a big day for consumers; the wire calls it a boost for automakers

…(cont) It is survived by gas-powered cars and light trucks. The New York Post reports the rollback gives automakers more freedom to build them. Note whose freedom. The New York Times reports the new standards would kill a federal effort to speed the transition to electric vehicles. Effort is the honest word. An effort is something a government does on purpose and can stop doing on purpose.

It is preceded in death by the climate rules for coal- and gas-fired power plants, which the EPA gutted on the fourteenth of this month — most of them, though not all, and The Hill noted the final rule had been announced while its underlying text had not appeared. Three days before that, on the eleventh, the D.C. Circuit struck down the Energy Department's order keeping the J.H. Campbell plant at West Olive open past its planned retirement, holding the department had gone beyond its authority. Three days after, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the American Lung Association, the American Public Health Association, the Clean Air Council, Clean Wisconsin and the Environmental Defense Fund sued over that rollback.

The malarkey in all this is the word terminate, which suggests a villain removed rather than a table of numbers deleted. What died this month is dull as a phone book: mileage figures, emission ceilings, the penny-ante arithmetic that decides how much of a paycheck the tank takes. Losing that is the kind of shit that arrives quietly, one fill-up at a time, years after the announcement.

In lieu of flowers, ask the six organizations already in court whether their suit has room for a person who fills a tank.