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The Corporate Average Fuel Economy Ruling of 2012 (CAFE 2012) is a piece of legislation that was passed by the Obama administration pieced together by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the National Highway Safety Administration (NHSA) to raise the fuel efficiency requirements of passenger cars, light trucks and SUVS. Under the standards, passenger cars by the year 2025 will be required to get 54.5 miles to the gallon.

  This will be a two-stage transition for the American automakers. The requirements from 2017-2021 are set to be approximately 40.3 – 41 MPG and the fuel efficiency requirements from 2022-2025 are currently still be evaluated. They estimate that the 2022-2025 phase will be significantly more stringent on fuel requirements.

Notice how much more stringent the rest of the world's fuel efficiency standards have been in comparrison to the United States' for the past decade. What is everyone complaining about? It is known that there is not an infinite supply of petroleum in the world. Critics complain that setting these "unattainable requirements"   will raise the cost of the average vehicle. The fact is, when the technology becomes mainstream, the price naturally drops. The Toyota Prius in 2003 was 36,500 dollars. Today in 2012, the Prius costs 26,550 dollars. 

More so, if the US automakers don't conform with the times,  continuing to make more fuel efficient cars, then the rest of the global automakers will pass them by anyways. The US automakers have expressed support to the new fuel efficiency standards most likely because they know where the car market is headed in the next decade. Notice that in Europe by the year 2020, they will require the average passenger car to get 60 miles/gallon. The US CAFE 2012 requires cars to get 54 MPG by 2025, which is still well below the standards of the other developed nations. 

As of September 2012, Coast Guard officials found a 4 mile long oil slick floating above the Macondo well, home of the worst oil spill in American history. BP claims that this is not a leak from the well but from the equipment used to cap the well. 

Crienglish.com says,

"Environmental groups have raised concerns that the drilling of relief wells to cut off the flow of oil and the failure of the original well may have fractured the sediments, causing new leaks. After Hurricane Isaac struck the Gulf Coast earlier this year, reports from several coastal locations indicated the storm's surge had uncovered mats of oil on a number of beaches."