California Sues the Trump Administration in Its Escalating War Over Auto Emissions

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: New York Times



WASHINGTON — California and 23 other states on Friday filed suit against the Trump administration’s unprecedented legal reversal of the state’s authority to set its own rules on climate-warming tailpipe emissions. The lawsuit represents the starting gun in a sweeping legal battle over states’ rights and climate change that is likely be resolved only once it reaches the Supreme Court. The decision could ultimately have wide-ranging repercussions affecting states’ control over their own environmental laws, the volume of pollution produced by the United States, and the future of the nation’s auto industry.

All the state attorneys general signing on to the suit are Democrats, but they represent several states that Mr. Trump won in 2016. States joining the lawsuit include Colorado, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Nevada, North Carolina, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Washington, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan. “This is the fight of a lifetime for us,” said Mary Nichols, California’s top climate change official. “I believe we will win.”

The two top Trump administration officials overseeing the move proudly defended it at a Thursday morning news conference at the Washington headquarters of the Environmental Protection Agency. The abolishment of California’s stringent rule on tailpipe climate pollution — which 13 other states also follow — “meets President Trump’s commitment to establish uniform fuel economy standards for vehicles across the United States, ensuring that no state has the authority to impose its policies on everybody else in our whole country,” said Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao. Should the case reach the Supreme Court while Mr. Trump remains in office — a Democratic administration would be unlikely to defend the policy in court — administration officials say they are confident they will win. Legal experts say that view may have merit. “It’s not an environmentally friendly court,” said Michael Gerrard, an expert in environmental law at Columbia University.

The Transportation Department and E.P.A. will jointly revoke a legal waiver, granted to California by the Obama administration under the authority of the 1970 Clean Air Act, allowing the state to set tighter state standards for greenhouse gas emissions from vehicle tailpipes. The move is the first of a planned one-two punch designed by the Trump administration to unravel one of Mr. Obama’s signature climate change policies: In the coming weeks, the E.P.A. and Transportation Department are also expected to roll back a national Obama-era tailpipe pollution standard that was based upon the California standard.

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/20/climate/california-auto-emissions-lawsuit.html

[elleng]

1. "The administration insists on attacking the authority of California and other states

to tackle air pollution and protect public health,” said Mr. Becerra in a statement. “President Trump should have at least read the instruction manual he inherited when he assumed the presidency, in particular the chapter on respecting the rule of law.”

Andrew Wheeler, the administrator of the E.P.A., laid out some of those arguments Thursday morning. Speaking in the E.P.A. headquarters’ ornate Rachel Carson room, named for the biologist who is credited with galvanizing the modern environmental movement, Mr. Wheeler laid out a two-pronged legal argument for revoking the pollution waiver.

He noted that the 1970 Clean Air Act was designed to create national standards to limit vehicle emissions of pollution that damages human health, such as soot and smog. The Clean Air Act allowed California, because of its uniquely bad smog problems, to apply for waivers from the E.P.A. to set stronger state standards. Over the years, California has received dozens of such waivers.

During the Obama administration, the E.P.A. granted California a waiver to set tighter standards for a different kind of pollutant: greenhouse gases.

Trump administration officials contend that the greenhouse gas waiver was improperly granted because, although greenhouse gases cause harm by trapping heat in the atmosphere and warming the planet, they do not cause the specific local or regional problems — say, asthma or lung disease — linked to traditional pollutants such as soot and smog.

“California has unique problems with pollutants” like soot or smog causing health problems locally, Mr. Wheeler said. “It does not make sense to use that authority to try to address a national or global issue like greenhouse gas pollution.” He added, “For greenhouse gases, the tight and direct link isn’t there. California cars have no closer link to California’s climate change than cars in Japan or anywhere else.” . .

“The statute says no state can have a state law or regulation that is related to fuel economy,” said Jeff Holmstead, who was a top E.P.A. official in the George W. Bush administration.

California and the other states maintain that the waiver to set standards on tailpipe greenhouse pollution was granted lawfully, within the authority granted by Congress under the Clean Air Act, and its revocation is unlawful.

“It is highly uncertain whether E.P.A. has the legal authority to withdraw a waiver. So that’s the first question,” said Mr. Gerrard, the Columbia University professor.

The California lawsuit also contends that those tailpipe standards are required for the state to control emissions of the other pollutants, such as soot and smog, at levels required to meet even federal standards. “We need the extra clean cars to meet the standards set by the federal government,” said Ms. Nichols. “If this prevails, millions of people in California will breathe dirty air. There will be more pollution, more asthma more hospitalizations, more premature deaths.”

[BumRushDaShow]

4. I had posted this in my LBN thread that original announced the removal of the waiver -

https://www.democraticunderground.com/10142368750#post11

Here is info on the waiver they are operating under -

https://www.epa.gov/regulations-emissions-vehicles-and-engines/california-greenhouse-gas-waiver-request

And specifically it says that due to the law allowing CA to have such a waiver per this criteria -

According to the Clean Air Act Section 209 – State Standards, EPA shall grant a waiver unless it finds that California:

was arbitrary and capricious in its finding that its standards are in the aggregate at least as protective of public health and welfare as applicable federal standards;

does not need such standards to meet compelling and extraordinary conditions; or

has proposed standards not consistent with Section 202(a) of the Clean Air Act.

So it basically says they pretty much MUST give CA the waiver (and the EPA can be taken to court for not granting if they can't show or justify that CA did not need the waiver).

And there are states like CA and even CO (notably due to Denver) that have cities in odd geographic/topographical locations that allow pollutants to settle over their cities, that are often unable to be scoured out by prevailing winds.

I remember my first trip to L.A. a little over 30 years ago and waking up the morning after I arrived to yellow "fog" (this was WAY after the "Gray May/June Gloom" time of year - i.e., September). I figured it was fog (since the city is by the ocean) and paid no attention. Next morning, same thing. Third morning I was like wait.... this MUST be SMOG not FOG (and mainly because each time I saw it, it was yellowish-brown when the sun hit it and not white or gray)!

[elleng]

5. Thanks. They sure as heck need it,

and (if properly interpreted,) should maintain the waiver.

Lived in Denver for a year, and skies were clear at the time, thank goodness.

[BumRushDaShow]

6. I was fortunate to go to Denver in 1991

(in the summer) and it was clear as well. But I have seen so many pics of times when the jet stream ridge/trough sets up where the air just stagnates and in many cases, the city can get negative impacts from soot blown in from wildfires - including from other states.

https://patch.com/colorado/denver/denvers-air-quality-among-worst-nation-report-finds

[oldsoftie]

2. But I thought Republicans were all for states rights? Abortion was supposed to be state by state?

This almost seems hypocritical..........

[Baked Potato]

3. Leave California the heck alone!

Last edited Fri Sep 20, 2019, 10:26 PM - Edit history (1)

As a kid growing up in Southern California in the 60s and 70s I remember coming in the house after a day and having a hard time breathing. I remember breathing deep and it hurt in a weird way. Bad air just sat in the valleys. The Santa Ana winds would blow the shit out.

[ffr]

7. Too late for the Kremlin's tRump. I already bought an EV.

Your rules change comes a day too late.

[Midnightwalk]

8. Does that mean Texas won't be choosing text books for the country

Yeah right.

I am getting sick and tired of the tyranny of the minority in this country. From the electoral college to the senate to gerrymandering to the outsize influence of billionaires who own the media outlets and can buy elections.