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Bush's EPA: Making the World Safe for Greenhouse Gases

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  • Bush's EPA: Making the World Safe for Greenhouse Gases

    EPA denies California waiver on auto emissions

    By Janet Wilson, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
    3:32 PM PST, December 19, 2007

    U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Stephen Johnson today denied California's long-standing request for a waiver from federal law to be able to implement its own landmark regulations to slash greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles.

    "He denied the whole thing," said Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's communications director, Adam Mendelsohn.

    "I am extremely disappointed yet again with the Bush administration's unwillingness to address this critical issue," Schwarzenegger said in a statement.

    Johnson, in announcing his decision, said, "The Bush administration is moving forward with a clear national solution -- not a confusing patchwork of state rules."

    The California law calls for a 30% cut in tailpipe and other vehicle emissions by 2016 and is a key piece of the state's aggressive efforts to reduce global warming.

    Under the U.S. Clean Air Act, California is entitled to impose stricter air pollution standards than the federal government as long as it first obtains a waiver. In the last three decades, more than 40 such waivers have been issued.
    40 waivers in a row and now bumpkis. L.A., this nation's second biggest city, lies in a basin which is prone to being filled up with smog. Since our AQMD has been handing down tougher emissions standard, smog alerts have dropped for over 100/year to just a handful. Now, our plans to keep out air clean (or at minimum "less dirty) are being twarted by the EPA. How many of our children and old folks will die because of this boneheaded ruling?
    Last edited by Zkribbler; December 19, 2007, 21:12.

  • #2
    How do they try to justify denying the waiver?

    Comment


    • #3
      They are moving towards a "national solution."

      I guess they're referring to the future milage requirements in the latest Energy Bill.

      Comment


      • #4
        CA = pwnd.
        I make no bones about my moral support for [terrorist] organizations. - chegitz guevara
        For those who aspire to live in a high cost, high tax, big government place, our nation and the world offers plenty of options. Vermont, Canada and Venezuela all offer you the opportunity to live in the socialist, big government paradise you long for. –Senator Rubio

        Comment


        • #5


          I hope Arnold goes to Washington and beats Georgie up.

          Comment


          • #6
            Secret Service could take him.
            I make no bones about my moral support for [terrorist] organizations. - chegitz guevara
            For those who aspire to live in a high cost, high tax, big government place, our nation and the world offers plenty of options. Vermont, Canada and Venezuela all offer you the opportunity to live in the socialist, big government paradise you long for. –Senator Rubio

            Comment


            • #7
              Hopefully this denial will either overturned rapidly or the auto industry will simply ignore it and continue to conform to California standards as they will be capable of reading the writing on the wall and know this denial will not stand under the next administration. If they design cars to the lower national standard those models would be unsellable in California by the time they reach production at around the start of the next administration.
              Companions the creator seeks, not corpses, not herds and believers. Fellow creators, the creator seeks - those who write new values on new tablets. Companions the creator seeks, and fellow harvesters; for everything about him is ripe for the harvest. - Thus spoke Zarathustra, Fredrick Nietzsche

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              • #8
                This is basic federal pre-emption of state law. Happens all the time.

                Really, there are other ways of achieving similar results. F.e., gasoline taxes.
                I came upon a barroom full of bad Salon pictures in which men with hats on the backs of their heads were wolfing food from a counter. It was the institution of the "free lunch" I had struck. You paid for a drink and got as much as you wanted to eat. For something less than a rupee a day a man can feed himself sumptuously in San Francisco, even though he be a bankrupt. Remember this if ever you are stranded in these parts. ~ Rudyard Kipling, 1891

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                • #9
                  That doesn't allow CA to dictate national policy then, Dan.
                  I make no bones about my moral support for [terrorist] organizations. - chegitz guevara
                  For those who aspire to live in a high cost, high tax, big government place, our nation and the world offers plenty of options. Vermont, Canada and Venezuela all offer you the opportunity to live in the socialist, big government paradise you long for. –Senator Rubio

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Originally posted by DanS
                    This is basic federal pre-emption of state law. Happens all the time.
                    Well, aside from the fact that under the EPA, it DOESN'T happen all the time. That's why there is a specific carve out procedure for California.
                    “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
                    - John 13:34-35 (NRSV)

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      Clearly the real problem is the EPA and it's regulatory practices. We should abolish it IMMEDIATELY and let the guiding hand of the free market fix everything.
                      I'm consitently stupid- Japher
                      I think that opinion in the United States is decidedly different from the rest of the world because we have a free press -- by free, I mean a virgorously presented right wing point of view on the air and available to all.- Ned

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                      • #12
                        The best of the BBC, with the latest news and sport headlines, weather, TV & radio highlights and much more from across the whole of BBC Online


                        The EU is moving ahead with CO2 limits for cars.
                        Try http://wordforge.net/index.php for discussion and debate.

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          Originally posted by DinoDoc
                          That doesn't allow CA to dictate national policy then, Dan.
                          We haven't dictated national policy with the last 40 exemptions.

                          Comment


                          • #14
                            Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
                            Well, aside from the fact that under the EPA, it DOESN'T happen all the time. That's why there is a specific carve out procedure for California.
                            That's because of historical accident. I don't see the problem in harmonizing national environmental regulations, in general.

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              The Guardian is reporting that Vice President Dick Chaney personally had a hand in blocking California's move to regulate automotive pollution which causes global climate change.

                              Cheney accused of blocking Californian bid to cut car fumes


                              Dan Glaister in Los Angeles
                              Monday December 24, 2007
                              The Guardian

                              The US vice-president, Dick Cheney, was behind a controversial decision to block California's attempt to impose tough emission limits on car manufacturers, according to insiders at the government Environmental Protection Agency.


                              Staff at the agency, which announced last week that California's proposed limits were redundant, said the agency's chief went against their expert advice after car executives met Cheney, and a Chrysler executive delivered a letter to the EPA saying why the state should not be allowed to regulate greenhouse gases.

                              EPA staff members told the Los Angeles Times that the agency's head, the Bush appointee Stephen Johnson, ignored their conclusions and shut himself off from consultation in the month before the announcement. He then informed them of his decision and instructed them to provide the legal rationale for it, they said.

                              "California met every criteria ... on the merits," an anonymous member of the EPA staff told the Times. "The same criteria we have used for the last 40 years ... We told him that. All the briefings we have given him laid out the facts."


                              In an editorial, the New York Times described the decision as, "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".

                              Johnson said that because Bush signed an energy bill last week which raised fuel economy standards, there was no justification for separate state regulation. The president, the agency said, had provided a "clear national solution" and there was no need for a "confusing patchwork of state rules to reduce America's climate footprint from vehicles".

                              But Johnson's staff gave him the opposite advice, warning him that should he block California, the state would probably sue him in the courts and would probably win. The state's governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, immediately announced that he would challenge the EPA's ruling in the courts, describing it as "legally indefensible".

                              California had wanted to implement a 2002 law limiting greenhouse gas emissions from cars and lorries. Had it been successful, 16 other states had said they would follow suit, effectively creating a national standard that car makers would have been obliged to follow.
                              The US vice-president, Dick Cheney, was behind a controversial decision to block California's attempt to impose tough emission limits on car manufacturers, according to insiders at the government Environmental Protection Agency
                              Try http://wordforge.net/index.php for discussion and debate.

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