And Whilst Rome Burns:

Mr Obama's administration worries about heavy duty truck emissions. From The Hill:

The White House on Tuesday announced the first-ever fuel-efficiency standards for heavy-duty trucks, standards the Obama administration says will save billions in fuel costs, slash oil consumption and reduce harmful air pollution.

President Obama was slated to announce the standards at an event Tuesday morning in Springfield, Va. But the event was canceled possibly so the president could attend a return ceremony for the 30 U.S. troops killed Saturday in Afghanistan. The president instead held a closed-door meeting at the White House to discuss the standards with industry officials.

How wonderful to simply tap the magic wand on technology and say -- bing! -- make it happen. Just as The One mandated that CAFE ratings of vehicle fuel mileage be 54.5 mpg by 2025. The magic techno wand again -- bing! -- make it happen. Anyone besides me notice that there wasn't one word written about how this was going to occur?

The new standards are aimed at increasing fuel efficiency and cutting emissions from a range of model year 2014-2018 heavy-duty trucks, including big rigs, semi-trucks, delivery trucks, buses, large vans and garbage trucks.

“Thanks to the Obama Administration, for the first time in our history we have a common goal for increasing the fuel efficiency of the trucks that deliver our products, the vehicles we use at work, and the buses our children ride to school,” Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood said in a statement.

Medium- and heavy-duty trucks are a major source of air pollution and fuel consumption. They make up about 4 percent of the total vehicles on the road in the United States, but they account for about 20 percent of oil used and 20 percent of the greenhouse gases emitted by the transportation sector.

To me, this is the first step in the attempted elimination of the diesel engine. More on this in a moment.

That said, seems we may have forgotten about these salient tidbits:

Mr Obama thinks your energy plight is laughable. He's "got his," so to speak, since his new fleet of ObamaMobiles, a custom GM Cadillac built on the heavy duty truck Top Kick chassis gets, itself, 8 mpg:

If you’re complaining about the price of gas and you’re only getting 8 miles a gallon, you know,” Obama said laughingly. “You might want to think about a trade-in.”

Mr Obama, you're just a barrel of laughs, sir. What a darned knee-slapper! Despite the fact that his vehicles are exempt from federal green regulations. But heck, Mr Obama thinks we all need to suffer massive price hikes in gasoline anyway.

The point of Mr Obama's recent mandate is to, again, eliminate the diesel engine. The engine that moves the bulk of our transportation. Diesel engines are found in local transport vehicles, semi-trucks, locomotives and even ships.

There isn't an electric motor strong enough to pull a locomotive absent a massive separate and hugely-expensive catenary infrastructure system. There is no electric motor powerful enough to push a 150,000-ton ship absent a diesel engine hence -- with locomotives and ships, "diesel-electric" transmission systems.

The goal, then, clearly, is to run all vehicles on electric power. Fusion isn't technologically possible and hydrogen isn't feasible either.

There's just one itty-bitty problem, as I wrote here:

At the same time, Mr Obama wants to radically increase the number of electric vehicles in the nation -- while, simultaneously -- putting dampers on the construction of additional electrical generation stations.

He and the Religious Left say:

- No coal (dirty, comes from the ground)

- No oil (see above)

- No nuclear (see Japan)

- No windborne (kills birds)

- No water-powered (means more dams and reservoirs)

- No geothermal (not enough, too unstable)

- No solar power (eats too much arable land, requires too much water for cleaning)

What's left?

YOU. Pedaling a bicycle on a pulley system connected to some fan blades in summer.

Here's what's likely to happen: Class 8 truck building -- one of the last bastions of actual American heavy manufacturing -- will crank up for a bit and then plummet.

It will also kill independent American truckers, because only larger fleets will be able to afford the new line of much-higher-priced trucks. Or will Mr Obama step in and nationalize truck manufacturing like he tried to do with light-vehicle manufacturing?

I'll let one commenter from the original The Hill piece summarize:

A 23% cut in fuel consumption in big rigs? Long haul companies all along have been working on decreasing their fuel consumption. Technology for the equipment is constantly changing. Fleet operations for example routing, delivery times and even giving bonuses to the drivers based on fuel consumption. Long haul companies have always attempted to cut fuel consumption for one reason and one reason only. The free market one. COST! Their fuel costs directly impact their bottom line.

Now the government is gonna step in and say "Cut 23% from your fuel consumption." For the clueless liberals. If the long haul companies could cut even 1% from their fuel consumption they would do in 1/100th of a heartbeat for only one reason, the best reason! TO PUT MORE MONEY IN THEIR POCKETS!

Using a heavy regulatory hand will only achieve the opposite. Again some little Know Nothing in government comes up with an arbitrary figure: "Lets cut fuel consumption by 23%!" They pay no attention to the laws of physics or the laws of economics.

They propose a regulation based on "Miles Per Gallon" when it should be based on "Ton Miles Per Gallon" The first knee jerk reaction is to make the trucks & trailers lighter. The reality is the total weight of the trucks is regulated for safety reasons.

The normal standard being 80,000 lbs (40 ton) GVW (gross vehicle weight) limit. In steps the law of economics. For every pound saved in TARE (empty weight of the truck) you can haul one more pound of cargo. Which means more money on the company's bottom line. In simple terms you can lower the TARE of the truck but it won't lower the GVW. But you hauled more cargo for the same amount of fuel. In the end the government should stay out of this one. The laws of capitalism dictate that less fuel used means better bottom line. What better motivator is there than that?

Again, the jackasses in DC merely waving their Magic Techno Wand and making an Imperial Edict to abrogate technology itself, the laws of physics and gravity.

Where can I find one of those wands, eh?

BZ