California Asks Epa to Tighten Emissions Rules

California state officials asked the federal government to impose the strictest controls on tailpipe emissions in the country reducing carbon dioxide by 30 percent by 2016. This move is expected to force automakers to average more than 40 miles per gallon in the next decade. Eleven states, including Maine, have adopted California's regulations, but they are on hold pending the outcome of auto industry legal challenges.

The state has instituted a requirement that would force automakers to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from vehicles starting September 2008. Eleven states have adopted its regulations, including New York, Maryland, Rhode Island and Vermont. A waiver from EPA is required in order to put the rule into effect. "California can regulate first as it has in the past," said Robert Sawyer, the chairman of the California Air Resources Board, noting California's "unique needs for its own motor vehicle program."

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) earlier held a day-long hearing suburban Washington to tackle the issue. The federal agency has taken no action since California sought the waiver in 2005. It only scheduled the hearing after the Supreme Court ruled in April that the EPA has the express authority to regulate greenhouse gases and tailpipe emissions as an air pollutant under the Clean Air Act.

"Global warming is happening now," Sawyer noted. He also stressed the international consensus in a series of reports. He pointed to the shrinking of glaciers around the globe and shifts in climate that will lead to the disappearance of snow from Mt. Kilimanjaro in Africa, for example. He said that California's wine and tourism industries are at risk, noting its temperature has increase 0.7 degrees over the last 100 years, raising sea levels.

Automakers said that the new regulations will cost billions and do little to improve the world's environment because other countries will continue to pollute. It will, they added, create a complex web of regulations. California said that emissions controls are much lower today and that automakers have used efficiency gains to improve horsepower and increase size rather than increase fuel economy.

Automakers should improve fuel economy "instead of responding to private desires," said Dan Sperling, a professor at the University of California Davis. "A patchwork of state-level fuel economy regulations as is now proposed by California is not just unnecessary but actually counter-productive," said Steven Douglas, the director of environmental affairs for the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, a trade group that represents major automakers including General Motors Corp., the Ford Motor Co., DaimlerChrysler AG and the Toyota Motor Corp.

Automakers are fighting the regulations and finally put a halt to its implementation. The stirring desire to avoid it on a number of fronts is expected to create swift halt likened to EBC brakes. They have filed three federal lawsuits challenging the regulations in California, Vermont and Rhode Island. In those suits, automakers have said that the regulations could force it to add expensive improvements and stop selling some of its heaviest vehicles.

Separately, Congress is considering several proposals to dramatically increase corporate average fuel economy. U.S. Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich, said that his goal is to have an alternative bill to submit when the legislation reaches the Senate floor in early June. "We're working very hard, and I hope that we will," he said. Levin has been meeting with his colleagues seeking to soften the current fuel economy proposal. He said earlier that a draconian fuel economy proposal could bankrupt Chrysler Group, given its heavy reliance on light trucks.

Last week, Levin and other Michigan Democrats, including Gov. Jennifer Granholm, signed on to a proposal that would exempt auto manufacturers from fuel economy requirements through 2020 if they agreed to produce all vehicles to run on flexible fuels like E85.

That brought stormy reactions from Democrats, including committee chairwoman Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif. Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., dismissively cited Inhofe's famous declaration that global warming is ‘the greatest hoax in human history.’ "This 'hoax' is taking over place after place after place," Lautenberg said, pointing to shrinking glaciers and other phenomena that may be linked to climate change.