Bush defends EPA’s rejection of California plea
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The president insists that ‘a national plan’ on emissions standards is more effective at combating climate change. Meanwhile, Rep. Waxman asks the agency for documents on how the decision was made.
By Richard Simon and Janet Wilson, Los Angeles Times Staff Writers
9:43 AM PST, December 20, 2007
WASHINGTON — President Bush today defended the Environmental Protection Agency’s decision to deny California’s bid to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from automobiles, saying that a national strategy toward climate change is more effective than a state-by-state approach.
“The question is how to have an effective strategy,” Bush said at a year-end news conference. “Is it more effective to let each state make a decision as to how to proceed in curbing greenhouse gases, or is it more effective to have a national strategy?” Bush said.
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With the enactment this week of a landmark energy bill raising automobile gas mileage standards to 35 miles per gallon by 2020, Bush said, “We know have a national plan. It’s one of the benefits of Congress passing this piece of legislation.”
EPA administrator Stephen L. Johnson on Wednesday denied the state’s request to implement its own landmark law, dealing a blow to the state’s independent attempts to combat global warming and prompting an immediate vow from Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to take the decision to court.
“The Bush administration is moving forward with a clear national solution, not a confusing patchwork of state rules,” Johnson said in announcing his decision.
The decision infuriated public officials and environmentalists from Washington to Sacramento, who fired the first shots in what is expected to be a pitched legal and political battle through the 2008 presidential campaign. At least 16 other states, with nearly half the nation’s population, have adopted or are considering California’s emission limits and could join in challenges to Wednesday’s decision.
And with distrust toward the Bush administration rampant on Capitol Hill, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Beverly Hills) fired off a letter to the EPA today, requesting that the agency preserve and produce all documents relating to the decision.
“Your decision appears to have ignored the evidence before the agency and the requirements of the Clean Air Act,” Waxman says in the letter. Noting that the committee has opened into an investigation into whether EPA’s director “overruled the unanimous recommendations of EPA’s legal and technical staffs in rejecting California’s petition,” Waxman requested that the EPA turn over all documents relating to the request by next month.
Schwarzenegger assailed the EPA for “standing in our way” to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. “California sued to compel the agency to act on our waiver, and now we will sue to overturn today’s decision and allow Californians to protect our environment,” he said in a prepared statement. California Air Resources Board Chairwoman Mary Nichols, whose agency requested the waiver two years ago, said there was no “patchwork” of standards. “There is a California greenhouse gas standard . . . which 16 other states would adopt, whereas there is no federal greenhouse gas standard,” she said.
“The Supreme Court told EPA it has to take action on global warming. It affects our health and our environment. It’s not just about fuel economy.”
Congress is likely to weigh in, although lawmakers may not be able to craft legislation that could survive a presidential veto.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) called the decision “disgraceful.”
David Bookbinder, the Sierra Club’s chief climate counsel, vowed to take the fight to court. “These guys are 0 and 4 in court,” he said. “And they’re about to go 0-5.”
Bookbinder was referring to the Supreme Court’s decision this year that greenhouse gas regulation fell under the purview of the EPA and to several lower court decisions rebuffing the auto industry’s efforts to head off states’ regulation of tailpipe emissions.
The EPA waiver decision was a victory for the auto industry. David McCurdy, president and chief executive of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, said in a prepared statement that a “patchwork quilt of inconsistent and competing fuel economy programs at the state level would only have created confusion, inefficiency and uncertainty for automakers and consumers.”
The federal Clean Air Act allows California to set anti-pollution standards stricter than those of the federal government, subject to EPA permission. California had been waiting for the EPA to act since the state petitioned the agency in 2005, and at least 16 other states had been hoping to follow California’s lead.
Johnson, who telephoned Schwarzenegger shortly before announcing his decision Wednesday, said that with the energy bill, there was no need for separate state regulations that would cover only part of the country.
Under the energy bill, fuel efficiency for new cars and light trucks will increase 40% by 2020, for a fleet-wide average of 35 mpg, the biggest congressionally ordered increase since the fuel economy program was created in 1975. Cars and light trucks, including SUVs, account for about a fifth of U.S. carbon dioxide emissions.
“I believe that Congress by passing a unified federal standard of 35 mpg delivers significant reductions that are more effective than a state-by-state approach,” Johnson said. “This applies to all 50 states, not one state, not 12 states, not 15 states. It applies to all 50 states, and that’s great for the economy, for national security and for the environment.”
Johnson said California’s request was unlike others that had been granted by his agency that covered “pollutants that predominantly impacted local and regional air quality.”
Superman
March 12, 2010 at 3:11 pm
There are over thirty-million motor vehicles registered in California.
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