|
The New York Times
OPINION
Arrogance and Warming
EDITORIAL,
nytimes.com on the Web, December 21, 2007
The Bush administration’s decision to
deny California permission to regulate and reduce global warming emissions from
cars and trucks is an indefensible act of executive arrogance that can only be
explained as the product of ideological blindness and as a political payoff to
the automobile industry.
The decision, announced Wednesday by Stephen Johnson, the administrator of the
Environmental Protection Agency, overrode the advice of his legal and technical
staffs, misconstrued the law and defied both Congress and the federal courts.
It also stuck a thumb in the eyes of 17 other state governors who have grown
impatient with the federal government’s failure to regulate greenhouse gas
emissions and wanted to move aggressively on their own.
The Clean Air Act of 1970 gave California authority to set its own clean air
standards if it first received a federal waiver. The law also said that
other states could then adopt California’s standards. In 2004, California
asked permission to move ahead with a law requiring automakers to reduce
greenhouse gas emissions from new cars and light trucks by 30 percent by 2016.
That would require improvements in fuel economy far beyond those called for in
the energy bill signed this week.
Over the years, California has made 50 waiver requests to regulate smog-forming
pollutants and other gases and has never been denied. This was the first
request involving emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, which
the Bush administration has steadfastly refused to regulate.
For three years, the E.P.A. also hid behind the argument that it had no
authority over carbon dioxide emissions because carbon dioxide was not
specifically identified as a pollutant under the Clean Air Act. The
Supreme Court demolished that argument last April. Subsequent court
decisions have upheld the states’ authority to set their own standards while
refuting the auto industry’s assertions that meeting the California standards
would be technologically and economically impossible.
Undeterred, industry tried to insert language in the energy bill that would have
gutted E.P.A.’s authority to regulate carbon dioxide and, thus, its authority to
grant California its waiver. Congress refused. The automakers also
sought relief from the White House and Vice President Cheney. The result
of all these machinations was Mr. Johnson’s decision on Wednesday and the
ludicrous reasoning that accompanied it.
One of Mr. Johnson’s arguments was that a “national solution” to carbon dioxide
emissions was preferable to a “confusing patchwork of state rules.” A
national solution is precisely what the administration has refused to offer.
And the California rule — once in force there and in 17 other states — would in
fact constitute a uniform standard covering nearly half the car market.
That is why the automakers lobbied so fiercely against it.
It has been hard enough to trust Mr. Bush’s recent assertions that he has
finally gotten religion on climate change. It all seems like posturing
now.
|
