On Wednesday December 19th, Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA) administrator Stephen Johnson announced that he was denying a
waiver for California under the Clean Air Act to implement global warming
pollution standards for cars and trucks—one of the largest and fastest growing
sources of global warming pollution.
This decision would also derail the efforts of the eighteen other states
that have adopted or are in the process of adopting California’s
vehicle emission standards.
Statement of Environment America Energy Program Director Rob
Sargent:
“EPA has turned a blind eye to the law, science, and the
critical role that the states are playing in tackling global warming. The decision to block California’s
vehicle emissions standards is nothing less than an early Christmas gift to the
automobile industry from their friends in the White House.
For years, California’s
vehicle emissions standards have resulted in cleaner cars and trucks on America’s
highways. In the face of federal
inaction on global warming, states across the country have opted to follow California’s
lead in order to achieve significant state-level cuts in global warming
pollution.
Thirteen states have adopted California’s
motor vehicle emissions standards and five states have announced their
intention to adopt them. EPA’s denial of California’s
waiver request undermines a powerful global warming pollution reduction tool
available to states looking to do their part to tackle global warming. This misguided decision by the Bush
administration flies in the face of overwhelming public support for
policy-makers to do more—not less—to address the challenge of global warming.
The Bush administration has tried to explain away the public
backlash to this decision by pointing to the increase in fuel economy standards
signed into law the same day, but the comparison doesn’t add up. The Clean Cars program is about reducing air
pollution including the pollution that causes global warming, not increasing
miles per gallon. To the extent that the
Clean Cars program forces carmakers to make cars that go further on a gallon of
gas, the fuel savings and the global warming emissions will be greater and
happen sooner than under the CAFE bill just signed by the president.
Earlier this year,
Environment America released
a report showing that, nationally, the vehicle emissions standards blocked by
EPA’s decision would have cut global warming pollution by 100 million tons per
year by 2020 in the eighteen states that have adopted or are considering
adopting the standards. Cumulative
emissions reductions from this program in all eighteen states would have been
536 million metric tons by 2020—the equivalent of taking more than 100 million
of today’s cars off the road for an entire year.
We are confident that
the courts will overturn this flawed decision, and allow states across the
country to move forward with these much needed global warming pollution
standards for cars and trucks."
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Environment America—a federation of state environment groups—is the new
home for U.S. PIRG’s environmental work: www.EnvironmentAmerica.org
