State's Rights are ignored not just in the Drug War, but also if Bush donors interests are comprised.
The Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday denied California and 16 other states the right to set their own standards for carbon dioxide emissions from automobiles.
The E.P.A. administrator, Stephen L. Johnson, said the proposed California rules were pre-empted by federal authority and made moot by the energy bill signed into law by President Bush on Wednesday. Mr. Johnson said California had failed to make a compelling case that it needed authority to write its own standards for greenhouse gas emissions from cars and trucks to help curb global warming.
“The Bush administration is moving forward with a clear national solution, not a confusing patchwork of state rules,” Mr. Johnson said in an evening conference call with reporters. “I believe this is a better approach than if individual states were to act alone.”
[From E.P.A. Says 17 States Can’t Set Emission Rules for Cars - New York Times]
So transparent.
A long list of California and other officials denounced the ruling:California’s proposed rules had sought to address the impact of carbon dioxide and other pollutants from cars and trucks that scientists say contribute to the warming of the planet.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said the states would go to federal court to reverse the E.P.A. decision.
“It is disappointing that the federal government is standing in our way and ignoring the will of tens of millions of people across the nation,” Mr. Schwarzenegger said. “We will continue to fight this battle.”
He added, “California sued to compel the agency to act on our waiver, and now we will sue to overturn today’s decision and allow Californians to protect our environment.”
Twelve other states — New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Mexico, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington — had proposed standards like California’s, and the governors of Arizona, Colorado, Florida and Utah have said they would do the same.
If the waiver had been granted and the 16 other states had adopted the California standard, it would have covered at least half of all vehicles sold in the United States.
[snip]
The California attorney general, Edmund G. Brown Jr., called the decision “absurd.” He said it ignored a long history of waivers granted California to deal with its special topographical, climate and transportation circumstances, which require tougher air quality standards than those set nationally.
Mr. Brown noted that federal courts in California and Vermont upheld the California standards this year against challenges by the auto industry.
Senator Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat, said: “I find this disgraceful. The passage of the energy bill does not give the E.P.A a green light to shirk its responsibility to protect the health and safety of the American people from air pollution.”
Representative Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California and chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said the E.P.A. decision defied law, science and common sense. He said his committee would investigate how the decision had been made and would seek to reverse it.
Richard Blumenthal, the attorney general of Connecticut, called the ruling “outrageous.”
“The excuses for this mockery of law and sound public policy are like the outworn treads on automobiles,” Mr. Blumenthal said, “and the administration will be no more successful in court on this issue than it has been in a string of decisions in our challenges against it.”
[snip] Andrew M. Cuomo, the New York attorney general, said the state would challenge the decision.
Mary Nichols, the head of the California Air Resources Board, which had geared up to enforce the proposed emissions rules on 2009-model cars, said the reasoning was flawed. “Thirty-five miles per gallon is not the same thing as a comprehensive program for reducing greenhouse gases,” Ms. Nichols said.
David Doniger, a lawyer for the Natural Resources Defense Council, said the decision was scientifically and legally indefensible. Since 1984, Mr. Doniger said, the agency has not distinguished between local, national and international air pollution.
“All the smog problems that California has are shared with other states, just like the global warming problems they have are shared with other states,” he said.
