A top Biden nominee to regulate vehicle standards has reportedly discussed measures to make customers “pay for the full costs” of climate-change-causing actions.
President Joe Biden nominated Ann Carlson, the interim administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, to lead the agency permanently.
Carlson has an extensive history of advocating for environmental causes. In some of her previous research papers, she argued for reorienting incentives against fossil fuel emissions by increasing the price of activities such as driving a car.
“I think our salvation relies not on the good will of individuals. Instead, governments and markets need to take steps to make us pay for the full costs of the behaviors in which we engage (a carbon price on energy usage is a good start). In other words, we need to be saved from ourselves.” Carlson wrote previously in an article.
Carlson is an expert in environmental law and served as a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles prior to being selected by Biden’s staff as NHTSA’s chief counsel.
Since September of last year, she has acted as the administrator of the NHTSA.
“If driving is cheap, gas mileage doesn’t much matter to most people even with news of climate change, even in the face of calls for energy conservation, and even with the memory of high fuel prices just behind us. Behavioral change with respect to consumer car purchases won’t occur, in other words, out of the goodness of our hearts,” she continued in the same article.
The climate change objective of the Biden administration looks to be closely aligned with most of Carlson’s prior criticism.
Concerns have been expressed by Republicans regarding her nomination.
Biden has introduced a number of climate change initiatives through executive order and congressional legislation, including the Inflation Reduction Act.
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