The effort by the Environmental Protection Agency to prohibit states from regulating tailpipe emissions, while wrongheaded, includes a lovely irony.
In declaring that California couldn’t enact its own stricter restrictions, EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson admitted that climate change and greenhouse gas emissions are serious global problems.
So wide-reaching are the effects, California didn’t demonstrate “compelling and extraordinary conditions” required for a waiver under the Clean Air Act. The rest of the country, he said, is similarly suffering.
It may not seem like much, but for an administration that has only grudgingly — and recently — come into step with leading scientists on the issue of global warming, it’s worth something.
Johnson said the problem cries out for a federal solution. Hear, hear. Unfortunately, save the increase in vehicle fuel efficiency standards passed by Congress, federal answers have been few and far between.
The Bush administration is stubbornly sticking to its anemic voluntary approach to addressing the greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global warming.
In fact, there are many issues facing the country that would benefit from a federal approach: immigration, health care and a renewable energy standard.
Unfortunately, Congress is so besieged by divisions within itself and with the administration that few of these issues get the broad solutions they deserve.
Instead, the states are left to shoulder the load alone, and many have made admirable efforts.
It’s interesting that while states have been chugging along, taking on one matter after another, it is California’s effort to regulate tailpipe emissions that has drawn EPA objections. The agency routinely has granted waivers to California allowing the state to set its own air pollution standards.
In this case, California wants to force automakers to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 30 percent in new cars and trucks sold in the state by 2016.
Twelve other states had passed California’s standards and another half-dozen, including Colorado, were working on approving such restrictions when the EPA issued its denial.
Not surprisingly, the auto industry opposes the effort, saying it is tantamount to an unlawful state effort to further lower fuel economy standards, which comes under federal purview.
Lawsuits have ensued, and the matter is likely to be decided long after the Bush administration vacates the executive branch.
If California ultimately prevails, as seems likely, then it and other states could take action in clamping down on tailpipe emissions.
But in the meantime, with the EPA declaration that global warming was seriously endangering the entire country, the Bush administration has one less excuse for stalling on federal regulations.
Not incidentally, almost a year ago, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the agency to begin regulating carbon dioxide emissions from automobiles. The EPA’s Johnson has been maddeningly vague about exactly when that’s going to be accomplished.
Time is running out on such gamesmanship. Congress and the administration need to take the problem of greenhouse gas emissions head on, or get out of the way.
