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they may," he told Grist in an interview during the lead-up to the primaries. "But the truth, in this case, should be appealing to UAW's workers: I believe I can put them to work. I believe I can have them working making cars; they can just make cars that are more efficient. "
One of Kerry's senior campaign strategists, who spoke to Muckraker on condition of anonymity, said, "There is a lot of closed-door conversation going on right now about fuel-economy -- clearly it's one of the top issues given concerns about spiking gasoline prices, national security, energy independence, global warming, you name it." But Kerry is trying to address the issue in a way that emphasizes the advantages to industry, not the threats. "We understand why Gov. Granholm and others are getting pressured by industry to resist plans like this, but still we're determined to help them understand why it's necessary in the long view," said the strategist.
According to Dan Becker, a global warming expert at the Sierra Club, Kerry's CAFE plan may not cause him much electoral trouble. The Sierra Club commissioned a poll of 650 likely voters in Michigan in 2002 and found that a surprising 77 percent supported ramping up CAFE standards to 40 mpg over 10 years. And of 150 United Auto Workers households polled, a whopping 84 percent supported such standards.
"Clearly the voters and auto workers seem to understand the simple premise that Michigan's industry leaders and politicians do not: Better technology is better for jobs than old technology," said Becker.
Still, the issue reverberates well beyond Michigan: The Bush administration has made it very clear that it plans to use Kerry's CAFE proposal as proof that a Kerry administration would sabotage the economy. Scott Stanzel, press secretary for Bush's reelection campaign, told the New York Times last week that Kerry's fuel-economy plan would lead to 450,000 lost jobs and $170 billion in "lost economic output" between 2003 and 2020, citing figures from the federal Energy Information Administration.
The Kerry campaign counters that these statistics are entirely off-base, citing a recent joint study by the 20/20 Vision Education Fund and Management Information Services, which concluded that raising CAFE standards to higher levels could create up to 300,000 jobs.
"We absolutely believe that investing in new technologies and building the cars of the future will not only create jobs, but keep those jobs at home," said Viola.
The Bush team wants the electorate to believe that strict CAFE standards will export American jobs overseas. The Kerry team argues that lax fuel-efficiency standards essentially outsource the clean-energy industry to America's global competitors and that the full energy and ingenuity of U.S. workers should be marshaled behind the industry of the future. That's an argument enviros think Kerry can win.
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