Pennsylvania’s legislators are on the verge of passing bills that would prevent the state from adopting California’s pollution and fuel economy requirements for new automobiles. Environmentalists, air regulators and newspaper editorial boards claim the California standards are essential for Pennsylvania’s progress against smog.

They are mistaken.
         
Existing federal emission limits will eliminate almost all remaining automobile air pollution during the next two decades. Adopting California’s requirements would cost Pennsylvanians a bundle, while conferring imperceptible environmental benefits.
         
States have a choice when it comes to emission standards for new automobiles: federal or California. Under federal requirements, total air pollution from Pennsylvania’s cars will decline about 80 percent over the next 20 years. With California standards, the decline would be 82 percent. The air will be clean either way.
         
You’d never know this from the pronouncements of newspaper editorial boards around the Keystone State. For example, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette claimed preventing adoption of California’s requirements would “gut the state’s clean- air standards.” In reality, the feds tightened new-car emissions standards in 2001 and again in 2004, making federal standards comparable to California’s.
         
Regulators are likewise obfuscating the debate with baseless scare stories. In a recent letter to Pennsylvania legislators, Environmental Protection Secretary Kathleen McGinty claimed the state will lose $1.6 billion in federal highway funds if it fails to adopt California’s vehicle requirements.
 
In fact, the Department of Environmental Protection’s Clean Air Act compliance plans conclude that federal automobile requirements will be more than sufficient for the state to meet air pollution limits by required deadlines. DEP transmitted these plans to the federal Environmental Protection Agency under cover letters signed by McGinty.
         
McGinty claims the California requirements will reduce automobile pollution by a few thousand additional tons per year in 2025. This sounds like a lot only because McGinty left out some important context. Regulators estimate Pennsylvanians currently emit more than a million tons of smog-forming pollution each year, with about 300,000 tons coming from automobiles. Existing federal standards will eliminate the vast majority of these emissions. A few thousand additional tons from the California standards are way down in the noise.
         
A recent Patriot-News editorial created additional confusion by claiming “in the first 10 years of a California standard, smog would be reduced by 10 percent.” First, whatever the benefits of the California standards, they will take 20 years to fully materialize, because that’s about how long it takes for the vehicle fleet to turnover.
         
Second, The Patriot-News was snowed by another bit of statistical sleight-of-hand from Pennsylvania regulators: Compared with current levels, California’s standards will reduce automobile pollution by an additional 2 percent, not 10 percent.

Here’s the trick: To simplify the calculations, let’s say Pennsylvania’s automobiles currently put 100 tons of pollution into the air each day. Over the next 20 years, federal standards will get rid of 80 tons, or 80 percent, so that 20 tons per day remain. California’s standards would get rid of 82 tons, or 82 percent, leaving 18 tons remaining.

Eighteen tons is 10 percent less than 20 tons. This is the source of The Patriot-News’ claim of the benefits of California’s requirements. But the difference between 20 and 18 tons is only 2 percent of the current baseline of 100 tons, which is the appropriate baseline for measuring future improvements.

Despite the irrelevance of this debate for air quality, the stakes are high for Pennsylvania’s motorists. Cars meeting California emissions standards cost a few hundred dollars more, or a few hundred million per year statewide.
        
More importantly, the California standards also include a requirement of increased fuel economy. This will add $1,000 to $3,000 to new-car costs. Motorists would recoup some of this through fuel savings. But drivers who think higher mileage cars will make them better off can already buy one of the existing high-mileage models. Most don’t, even with current high fuel prices.
         
Motorists know what gasoline costs and can make their own judgments about how to meet their transportation needs within their financial constraints. They don’t need government nannies overriding those decisions.
         
With clean air already guaranteed by federal requirements, there’s no air quality or public health rationale for ceding control of Pennsylvania’s automobile policies to unelected California regulators. Whether for pollution or fuel economy, California’s standards are a bad deal for Pennsylvanians.

Joel Schwartz is a visiting fellow at AEI.