The Princeton Packet
When Congress passed the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 — that’s nearly 18 years ago, for those who are counting — it explicitly authorized California to adopt its own automobile emissions standards, recognizing that then, as now, California had by far the worst air in the country.
When President Bush — no, not this President Bush, the other one — signed the Clean Air Act Amendments into law, his signature explicitly authorized other states, including New Jersey, to adopt those same California standards, recognizing that then, as now, the Garden State trailed only the Golden State in the abundance of carbon dioxide and particulates befouling its air.
Yet here we are, a few weeks short of 2008, and the California auto-emissions standards are still, well, up in the air. That’s because the Bush administration — this President Bush, not that one — still hasn’t gotten around to deciding whether the standards California wants to adopt measure up to its idea of environmental protection.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has been dithering for nearly two years on California’s petition to implement the nation’s most stringent auto-emissions standards. California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger finally got tired of waiting for his fellow Republican in the White House to give the EPA the green light, and he filed a lawsuit to compel the federal agency to uphold the 1990 law.
Now, Gov. Jon Corzine and New Jersey have entered the fray, joining the California suit. This brings to 15 the total number of states suing the EPA to allow them to set standards for cars and light trucks that would reduce carbon dioxide emissions by an estimated 392 million metric tons by 2020 — the equivalent of taking 74 million of today’s cars off the road for a year.
New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York and nine other states have already adopted the California standards, but cannot put them into effect until the EPA acts on California’s request.
The EPA’s foot-dragging is attributable to two factors. The first is the Bush administration’s continuing failure to take seriously the relationship between global climate change and greenhouse-gas emissions. The second is the considerable clout the nation’s automakers have in Washington.
At the core of the California standards is a dramatic shift in the mix of light cars and trucks on the road — or, to be more precise, the mix of fuels that power these vehicles. The standards would require each automaker to reduce tailpipe emissions by an average of 30 percent beginning with the 2009 model year and culminating in 2016. To accomplish this, the automakers would have to dramatically increase their production of hybrids and other vehicles that run on alternative fuels.
Not surprisingly, the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers is less than enthusiastic about this approach, preferring what it calls a “uniform national standard” (read: more lenient) to a “patchwork of state standards” (read: more stringent). Meanwhile, the likelihood that New Jersey might reduce greenhouse gases by 20 percent by 2020, the goal set in the state’s Global Warming Response Act, grows more and more remote.
For this reason alone, New Jersey’s decision to join the California lawsuit was the right thing to do. And we should continue to press in every way possible for the long-overdue implementation of all the amendments to the Clean Air Act. As long as neither Washington nor Detroit shows any inclination to do so, it’s clear that Trenton, Sacramento and other state capitals must take up the mantle of leadership in the fight for cleaner, healthier air.
