Catching the Lies

Four newspapers note the problems with the administration's decision to prevent California and other states from setting their own auto pollution standards. The bigger one, it would seem, is that the administration apparently pretended to the rest of the world that the California standards were a good idea and then quickly blocked them. The other is that there is precedent, under a previous Republican president, to allow the state to go its own way but now, that's unacceptable. Whose agenda is being served?

In past, states were permitted to set own pollution rules

Bob Egelko,
Chronicle Staff Writer
During President Ronald Reagan's administration, when California was trying to enforce its own tough standards for pollution from diesel engines, the trucking industry argued that the state didn't qualify for a waiver under federal law because the problem wasn't unique to California.

William Ruckelshaus, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, sided with the state and let its law take effect. California didn't have to prove its diesel pollution was unique or worse than in any other state, he said in his 1984 decision, as long as it was an important problem because of conditions in the state.

The EPA's current administrator, Stephen Johnson, an appointee of President Bush, spoke in different terms Wednesday when he denied a waiver needed by California - and 16 other states - to allow enforcement of the nation's first limits on vehicles' emissions of greenhouse gases, which scientists consider a major cause of global warming.

The state doesn't meet the federal law's test for a more stringent pollution standard, Johnson said, because "California is not exclusive in facing this challenge." As a result, he said, California can't meet the test of the federal Clean Air Act, which allows the state to enforce its own air pollution standards if it demonstrates "compelling and extraordinary circumstances."

And from the NYT:
The Bush Administration’s Two Minds on the Environment

By The Editorial Board
Everyone knows by now that the Bush Administration on Wednesday night denied California and its Republican governor permission to proceed with an ambitious plan to substantially reduce greenhouse gas emissions from automobiles and SUV’s.

The administration argued, misleadingly, that California’s plan was unnecessary because the same reductions would be achieved in the new energy bill (they won’t). And it argued, disingenuously, that state mandates are inferior to a national mandate (which of course is the one thing the administration does not want).

But here’s something most people do not know: the Bush administration had actually (if furtively) touted the California plan as a shining example of American ingenuity and as evidence of the administration’s devotion to the global warming cause.

On Wednesday our colleague, Andy Revkin, noted on his New York Times blog, dot.earth, that in a speech in Milan in 2003, Harlan Watson, the chief United States climate change negotiator, described the states as “laboratories” for new and creative solutions and a good example of the “bottom up” approach to addressing the issue.

But the fight continues on other fronts:
L.A. port officials set truck cargo fee to cut air pollution

By ALEX VEIGA
The Associated Press
LOS ANGELES—Los Angeles Harbor Commission voted on Thursday to charge a fee on cargo containers moving through the Port of Los Angeles, part of a plan to reduce air pollution by replacing thousands of older diesel trucks with cleaner-burning models.

The commission approved a plan last month to require thousands of trucks hauling cargo to the port be replaced or upgraded to meet 2007 diesel truck emission standards by 2012.

The panel voted to charge a $35 fee for every loaded container beginning June 1. The fee does not apply to containers that are loaded onto rail.

And of course, there's this detail:
EPA chief is said to have ignored staff
The head of the agency rejected written findings in ruling against a California emissions law, sources say.

By Janet Wilson
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
The head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency ignored his staff's written findings in denying California's request for a waiver to implement its landmark law to slash greenhouse gases from vehicles, sources inside and outside the agency told The Times on Thursday.

"California met every criteria . . . on the merits. The same criteria we have used for the last 40 years on all the other waivers," said an EPA staffer. "We told him that. All the briefings we have given him laid out the facts."

EPA administrator Stephen L. Johnson announced Wednesday that because President Bush had signed an energy bill raising average fuel economy that there was no need or justification for separate state regulation. He also said that California's request did not meet the legal standard set out in the Clean Air Act.

But his staff, which had worked for months on the waiver decision, concluded just the opposite, the sources said Thursday.