April 25th – Governor Schwarzenegger announced today that a letter will be sent to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Thursday, April 26, 2007 demanding action on California's request to implement its Clean Cars law (AB 1493, Pavley, 2002). The governor intends to give EPA six months to act on the waiver before a lawsuit would be filed.
"We applaud Governor Schwarzenegger for using his muscle to challenge EPA's inaction in the courts," said Karen Douglas the California climate initiative director of Environmental Defense. "With the urgency of global warming it is indefensible that EPA would not act immediately to grant California's waiver request given the authority that the Supreme Court says EPA has to regulate global warming under the Clean Air Act."
California in 2002 passed the groundbreaking legislation to limit global warming pollution from tailpipes. Since then 12 other states have adopted clean car laws, including the passage of such a law in Maryland yesterday. California set a precedent of strong clean air standards that go further than the federal government, and it has a right to pass strong state laws as long as EPA grants it a waiver under the federal Clean Air Act.
Even though California requested the waiver from EPA in December of 2005, the agency has refused to grant California's waiver, even when requested by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (R-CA), claiming it had no authority to regulate carbon dioxide from automobiles. Just this month EPA's logjam was broken by the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling on April 2nd, 2007 when the Supreme Court ruled that carbon dioxide was a pollutant that could be regulated by EPA under its Clean Air Act authority.
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