Don’t bother, they’re heeeeere.

The clowns, that is.

In researching and writing about energy and environmental issues, there are times when I want to scream and beat the walls with my fists until they’re bloody. And thanks to our friends in the automotive business, today provided yet another example of the towering idiocy that sends me into such virtual rages.

What am I blabbering about, one might ask? Try this gem:

Auto Makers Tap Brakes On Fuel-Economy Goals:

The auto industry said federal regulators are pushing too far, too fast in their effort to raise fuel-mileage rules. The complaints from the industry, which had previously voiced support for tougher standards, underscore how economic hardship is affecting a major policy debate.

Auto makers are objecting to new rules being crafted by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The rules would require car makers to achieve a fleet-wide average fuel efficiency of at least 31.6 miles per gallon for cars and trucks by 2015, up from about 25 mpg today. The rules are a first step toward Congress’s goal of achieving average fuel economy of at least 35 mpg by 2020.

The agency is expected to finalize the rules this year, after considering public input and analyzing confidential product-plan submissions from manufacturers.

At a meeting with NHTSA decision-makers on Monday, industry officials laid out some of their objections to the rules. Advocates for more-stringent standards, on the other hand, argued that the agency needs to force auto makers to raise fuel efficiency beyond the proposed levels.

Auto makers earlier had praised the new standards. At an auto show in January, Toyota Motor Corp. President Katsuaki Watanabe challenged his company’s engineers “to meet the new standards well in advance of 2020.” In April, after NHTSA proposed its rules, Dave McCurdy, president of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, said “the industry has made a commitment to step forward and support these aggressive standards.”

In May, Ford Motor Corp. Chief Executive Alan Mulally told industry analysts: “I think we are going to be able to satisfy those requirements.”

…

Asked about the difference between the earlier pronouncements and the more-pessimistic view presented to NHTSA, Ford and the Alliance said their executives continue to support the 2007 energy law that mandates a 35-mpg target by 2020, but worry that a 31.6-mpg goal by 2015 would be too hard to achieve.

…

Many Democrats, consumer advocates and environmental activists said the industry is resisting an important regulation and could pay a political price in future battles on the issue. “They’re playing the same old game of insisting they can’t do it, even though reality is hitting them in the face,” said Mark Cooper, director of research at the Consumer Federation of America.

I’m going to try very hard to get through the next few paragraphs without violating my self-imposed rule about keeping this site family friendly. But I make no promises.

First and foremost, why in the world would any of these executives think they’ll have a prayer of selling a product mix with a fleet average of under 31.6 MPG in 2015? Seriously. They’re being strangled to death by consumers who have very little interest in their current lineups, with gasoline at roughly $4/gallon in the US. By 2015, four bloody years after we’re likely to hit peak oil, what do you think gasoline will cost in the US? Five? Six? Seven dollars a gallon? How many people will want to buy any vehicle that gets less than 40 MPG or doesn’t have an electrical plug? Thirty-one MPG will be seen as a ridiculous gas guzzler from a bygone era, and these guys are whining about having to average that across the fleet, meaning some vehicles can (and will) do worse.

Second, their “Woe is us! We can’t meet those tough requirements!” shtick has grown more than a little tiresome a very long time ago. As others have pointed out, the car companies have been wailing over such things for many decades; the business writer for The New Yorker, James Surowicki, has pointed out that this behavior goes back to the original introduction of safety glass. And it continued through virtually every safety and efficiency requirement proposed or enacted, and none of them turned into the doomsday scenario they predicted. At what point do these sorry excuses for executives and supposed leaders of a major industry feel enough shame when they look in the mirror that it keeps them from saying such things? Whatever that threshold is, obviously we’re not there yet, even when it requires them to make a stunning reversal, as they did in this case. If they were just a smidge more cowardly and greedy and duplicitous they could work for the tobacco companies.

Finally, in the current political climate, I have no confidence at all that all this latest bout of whining by the car makers won’t work. The US is hip-deep in the “silly season” (a.k.a. a presidential election cycle), so all bets are off.

Bah.