Extreme Temperature Diary- Wednesday December 3rd, 2025/Main Topic: Trump Plans to Weaken Fuel Efficiency Rules for Cars and Trucks – Guy On Climate
Dear Diary. Today representatives of major automobile companies are meeting with Trump, gleefully egging him on to reduce fuel use efficiency standards such that it will be easier for them to produce and sell large gas guzzling vehicles. Biden’s fuel efficiency standards were meant to hasten the transition to all electric vehicles, which is sorely needed.
What Trump is doing with his pro fossil fuel policies is destroying our climate such that it might be too late for any future democratic presidents to pull us back from the brink, although they could soften the blow from ramifications of an environment above +2.0°C above preindustrial conditions. Also, they could knock off a few tenths of a degree Celsius from future average global temperatures by declaring a climate emergency, but that is not until early 2029 if, and I mean if, they get elected.
Here is a new Washington Post article with the bad news on fuel efficiency regulations:
Trump plans to weaken fuel efficiency rules for cars and trucks – The Washington Post
Trump plans to weaken fuel efficiency rules for cars and trucksExecutives from Ford, GM and Stellantis will be at the White House Wednesday as Trump rolls back rules pushing automakers to sell more electric cars. Cars make their way over the East River on the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge into Queens in New York City. (JOHANNES EISELE/AFP via Getty Images)
By Nicolás Rivero and Dan Diamond
12/03/2025
The Trump administration plans to announce the rollback of fuel efficiency rules for U.S. cars and trucks at a White House event this afternoon attended by executives from the country’s biggest automakers.
President Donald Trump has long derided such rules as an “ EV mandate” that hurts the auto industry and raises car prices. He teased the upcoming announcement at a televised cabinet meeting Tuesday, saying, “We’re bringing back the automobile business.”
Executives from General Motors, Ford and Stellantis will be at the White House to mark the announcement.
“We appreciate President Trump’s leadership in aligning fuel economy standards with market realities,” Ford CEO Jim Farley, who will attend the announcement, wrote in a statement. “We can make real progress on carbon emissions and energy efficiency while still giving customers choice and affordability. This is a win for customers and common sense.”
White House officials did not answer questions about what changes they planned to make to fuel economy standards. But Trump’s signature second-term legislation, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, eliminated financial penalties for car companies that don’t meet federal fuel efficiency standards.
Although automakers can already ignore the rules without penalty, officially rolling the standards back makes it harder for a future administration to reinstate them, according to Dan Becker, director of the Safe Climate Transport Campaign at the environmental nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity.
With weaker rules, car companies will “make more gas guzzlers that guzzle oil and produce a lot of pollution and cost consumers more at the gas pump,” Becker said.
Trump signed a separate law in June to block California from enforcing a ban on new gas-powered car sales in 2035. Congress and the administration have also ended federal tax credits for EVs and pulled funding for building EVs and batteries.
Those policy changes have prompted car companies to walk back their commitments to sell more EVs, canceling planned factories and laying off workers. Analysts have slashed their predictions for future EV sales and raised their projections for greenhouse pollution. General Motors, which once vowed to only sell EVs by 2035, has shifted billions of dollars of planned investments from electric to gas-powered cars.
Federal fuel rules have ping-ponged from stricter to weaker standards as the White House has changed hands. Last year, President JoeBiden created strict rules that would have effectively forced automakers to sell more EVs. Now Trump is set to weaken them again.
The back-and-forth policy changes have put U.S. automakers in a difficult position, according to Rich Gold, a lobbyist who heads the public policy and regulation group at Holland and Knight.
“What the industry really needs is to be able to plan for a decade,” Gold said. “The auto industry doesn’t deal well with disruption and uncertainty. The infrastructure to build cars and get them to where they need to go takes a long time to build out.”
Even so, Gold said, automakers are happier with Trump’s lax rules than they were with Biden’s strict standards, which he said would have been hard to achieve.
Stellantis CEO Antonio Filosa, who will attend the announcement at the White House, said in a statement the company “appreciates the Trump Administration’s actions to re-align the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards with real world market conditions as part of its wider vision for a growing U.S. automotive industry.”
Republicans are also expected to join Trump, with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who chairs the Senate’s Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, planning to praise the administration’s ongoing work around CAFE standards, according to a committee aide.
Environmentalists, meanwhile, lamented the latest blow to U.S. fuel economy rules.
“They’re going to raise costs for consumers at the gas pump and they’re going to signal to the Chinese that the world market is open to you and we’re just going to abandon it,” said Becker.
Most read Climate
 By Nicolás Rivero Nicolás Rivero joined The Washington Post as a climate solutions reporter in 2023. Previously, he covered climate change for the Miami Herald and Quartz. follow on X@NicolasFuRivero
 By Dan Diamond Dan Diamond is a White House reporter for The Washington Post, with a focus on policy and public health. His email is dan.diamond@washpost.com and you can reach him on Signal at @dan_diamond.01. follow on X@ddiamond
Here are some “ETs” recorded from around the planet the last couple of days, their consequences, and some extreme temperature outlooks, as well as any extreme precipitation reports:
Here's a more technical yet still quite accessible overview of the climate.
Of particular note that even though we set a record for solar/wind last year, we also set the record for burning fossil fuels. Which we need to stop immediately, yet keep doing anyway. Which is Very Bad. — David B (@aardvarkz.bsky.social) 2025-12-03T01:18:56.765Z
Thank you--great piece! — Michael E. Mann (@michaelemann.bsky.social) 2025-12-03T17:18:43.474Z
‘Dinosaurs didn’t know what was coming, but we do’
Brazil’s environment minister talks about #climate inaction and the course we have to plot to save ourselves and the planet.
www.theguardian.com/environment/... — Dr Paul Dorfman (@drpauldorfman.bsky.social) 2025-12-03T13:24:20.827Z
A coal power station was “a large single target” that a single missile could take out. “You would need around 40 missiles to do the equivalent amount of capacity damage at a wind farm.”
www.ft.com/content/d4bc... — Dr Paul Dorfman (@drpauldorfman.bsky.social) 2025-12-03T12:38:57.901Z
Prof Bill McGuire, Professor Emeritus of Geophysical & Climate Hazards at UCL.
'A snapshot of what the UK will look like if we allow continued unmitigated #climate emissions to result in a reprise of early Eocene hothouse conditions.' — Dr Paul Dorfman (@drpauldorfman.bsky.social) 2025-12-03T12:50:37.734Z
Asia-Pacific faces ‘$500bn-a-year’ hit from rising seas if current policies continue.
And then there's coastal #nuclear #climate flooding ...
www.carbonbrief.org/asia-pacific... — Dr Paul Dorfman (@drpauldorfman.bsky.social) 2025-12-03T12:43:17.440Z
All aboard the Polar Express!! The tropospheric polar vortex will deliver frigid blasts in the eastern/ northern US for the next ~2 weeks and several chances of #snow. #cold #winter #fyp #polarexpress #polarvortex — Jeff Berardelli (@weatherprof.bsky.social) 2025-12-02T17:28:03.094Z
— Dr Paul Dorfman (@drpauldorfman.bsky.social) 2025-12-03T16:39:21.803Z
— Dr Paul Dorfman (@drpauldorfman.bsky.social) 2025-12-03T12:51:50.957Z
#AI datacentres demand huge amounts of electricity. Could they derail #Australia net zero.
www.theguardian.com/australia-ne... — Dr Paul Dorfman (@drpauldorfman.bsky.social) 2025-12-03T12:47:14.667Z
#AI datacentres demand huge amounts of electricity. Could they derail #Australia net zero.
www.theguardian.com/australia-ne... — Dr Paul Dorfman (@drpauldorfman.bsky.social) 2025-12-03T12:47:14.667Z
Excerpt from my article,
'Blaming nuclear regulators for vast cost over-runs and huge delays has always been a fallback position for the nuclear industry. This is not the fault of regulation, it’s the nature of the technology.'
www.thenational.scot/politics/256... — Dr Paul Dorfman (@drpauldorfman.bsky.social) 2025-12-03T12:16:42.093Z
— Dr Paul Dorfman (@drpauldorfman.bsky.social) 2025-12-02T21:03:02.436Z
Reuse and return schemes could help eliminate plastic pollution in 15 years
www.theguardian.com/environment/... — Dr Paul Dorfman (@drpauldorfman.bsky.social) 2025-12-03T13:21:16.052Z
Wasn't on my 2025 bingo card that #ScienceUnderSiege by @peterhotezmdphd.bsky.social & me would make 2025 top 25 book of the year lists in the @financialtimes.com and (conservative) @telegraph.co.uk, but not show up on @sciam.bsky.social's top *sixty seven* list 🤨
(Trump-era timidity)? — Michael E. Mann (@michaelemann.bsky.social) 2025-12-03T19:27:29.739Z
520 chemicals found in English soil, including long-banned medical substances
Fertilising arable land with human waste toxins re-enter food chain
www.theguardian.com/environment/... — Dr Paul Dorfman (@drpauldorfman.bsky.social) 2025-12-03T13:22:46.013Z
www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025... — Dr Paul Dorfman (@drpauldorfman.bsky.social) 2025-12-03T18:02:53.277Z
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