Editorial: Bush tries again to thwart greenhouse gas law

Once again the Bush administration and its backward looking allies in the auto industry are out to stop California from regulating greenhouse gas tailpipe emissions. This time they've buried a noxious provision in an otherwise laudable, ambitious and long-overdue new federal proposal to improve automobile fuel economy standards.

The provision, which would prevent California from enforcing one of its historic greenhouse gas laws, appears on page 378 of a 417-page document released by U.S. Transportation Secretary Mary Peters – on Earth Day, no less. It states in part that "any state regulation regulating tailpipe carbon dioxide is impliedly pre-empted," under the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act, EISA.

All of California's top-ranking elected officials – including Sen. Dianne Feinstein, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Attorney General Jerry Brown – have rightly denounced the Bush administration's pre-emption effort.

In a letter to Peters, Feinstein notes that Congress added a provision to last year's energy bill to prevent federal pre-emption, intentionally rebuffing efforts by the president to amend the bill in a way that would have limited California's authority.

"Congress did not make the president's requested changes," Feinstein tells Peters, "because it would have stripped California of the ability to protect the health and safety of its citizens from the threats posed by climate change."

The president's relentless efforts to stop California from enforcing its environmental laws have been resisted not just by Congress but by the courts as well. The U.S. Supreme Court and two lower federal courts rejected lawsuits filed by auto manufacturers last year with the support of the Bush administration that would have overturned the state's global warming law.

So, this newest attack, the pre-emption language tucked into the new fuel efficiency standards proposal, is an end run around both Congress and the courts. The proposed fuel standards would require automakers to produce cars and trucks able to achieve an average of 31.6 miles per gallon by 2015, a significant increase in fuel economy standards that have not improved in two decades.

That is a good thing. But it falls short of the standards necessary for car companies to meet California's greenhouse gas emission reduction standards. It's estimated that the state rules would require cars to achieve the equivalent of 36 miles per gallon by 2016.

Attorney General Brown accurately describes the Bush rules as a "covert assault" on California's historic greenhouse law. Mary Nichols, chairwoman of California's Air Resources Board, calls it an attack on the state's sovereignty. State officials will vigorously oppose the pre-emption language during the 60-day rule-making comment period. If they fail to get it removed in that forum, the state will sue – again.

Even as evidence mounts of global warming's harmful impacts on the planet, the auto industry with help from the Bush administration continues to oppose reasonable efforts to reduce their products' damaging effect on the environment. It seems to be a stupid and futile exercise, one that will end only when the Bush administration is no longer in office.