EPA administrator, Stephen L. Johnson, finally issued his justification for denying California's Clean Air Act waiver (the denial is discussed in a 1/24/08 PNL Stories post). The denial was issued last December after California requested permission to pass tailpipe emissions standards stricter than federal guidelines.Mr. Johnson, against the recommendations of his staff scientists, denied the request and stated that the new federal fuel efficiency standards, passed in December, were sufficient to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and that there shouldn't be a patchwork of state's emissions standards.
EPA issued its long delayed 47-page report in the Federal Register, and that clears the way for California and 18 other state to proceed with a lawsuit in federal court to fight the denial.
Administrator Johnson wrote: "While I find that the conditions related to global climate change in California are substantial, they are not sufficiently different from conditions in the nation as a whole to justify separate state standards."
California Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown dismissed Johnson's arguments as "obfuscating, sabotaging . . . specious, ill-founded. . . . We're going to fight him until he's sent packing by the next president." State regulators argue that by 2020 California's law would achieve twice the reduction as the federal fuel standards.
A document was released Tuesday by Senator Barbara Boxer who wants the denial reversed. She said the draft (written in conjunction with former administrator William K. Reilly), as well as internal agency e-mail messages she released, demonstrated that the E.P.A. was “in crisis.” Mr. Johnson’s decisions, she said, “went against the professional scientists and the professional legal experts.”
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