Analysis: California’s patience running on empty over proposed U.S. fuel rules
Analysis: California’s patience running on empty over proposed U.S. fuel rules
By Kevin Yamamura - [email protected]
Last Updated 12:19 am PDT Thursday, April 24, 2008
Story appeared in MAIN NEWS section, Page A15
President Bush’s popularity may have sunk to a new low this week in Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s office as it discovered the language deep within new federal fuel economy standards released on Earth Day.
The Bush administration proposed blocking California from imposing its stricter vehicle regulations, which the state believes are necessary to reach its environmental goals.
Mary Nichols, one of Schwarzenegger’s top environmental appointees, convened a Capitol press conference Wednesday to call the federal proposal “insidious,” adding that it was “frankly beyond even what we had thought possible from this administration.”
Though Schwarzenegger was in meetings down the hall, aides said Nichols spoke for him.
The Republican governor endorsed President Bush and campaigned for his re-election in Ohio. But in comments last week at Yale University – Bush’s alma mater, no less – Schwarzenegger gave his harshest indictment yet of the Republican president.
“President McCain, President Obama, President Clinton – I think will all shift this country into a much higher gear when it comes to climate change,” he said.
The governor has endorsed GOP Sen. John McCain, who along with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama has pledged to allow California to regulate its own vehicle greenhouse gas emissions.
Schwarzenegger has made global warming his signature concern since 2006 and used it to create political separation from an unpopular President Bush.
He signed Assembly Bill 32 requiring California to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions 25 percent by 2020, a goal the federal government has not agreed to. The governor has signed agreements with other states and countries on reducing emissions, implicitly skewering Washington for not doing so.
California still needs permission from the federal government to carry out a 2002 state law establishing strict standards on vehicles sold here, and the Bush administration has declined to give it, prompting legal disputes that are ongoing. Every time the Bush administration has refused to grant California permission, Schwarzenegger has responded by attacking the federal government.
“First, if you’re a Republican anywhere, you’re looking for opportunities to put distance between yourself and a very unpopular president,” said John J. Pitney, professor of government at Claremont McKenna College. “Second, the environment has long been a very big issue in California. For geographic reasons we have a greater sensitivity to it. And third, I do think he believes in it.”
The latest battle erupted Tuesday over a proposed regulation in the U.S. Department of Transportation’s proposed fuel economy standards. On Page 378 of a 417-page report, the department proposes blocking states from regulating vehicle greenhouse gas emissions.
Brian Turmail, a Transportation Department spokesman, said the administration believes it is better to establish a national standard rather than allowing states to decide on their own.
“It’s our feeling that when Congress declined to include language allowing state-specific fuel economy standards in its current bill, that it indeed wanted to have national fuel economy standards,” Turmail said. “From our point of view, these efforts by states would undermine and render moot a national fuel economy standard.”
Turmail said DOT intends to adopt its regulations by the end of the year, setting standards that would raise the combined fuel economy standard for automobiles and light trucks to 31.6 miles per gallon by 2015.
Nichols said California’s standards are 13 percent more stringent than the federal guidelines by 2015. She suggested Wednesday that the Bush administration was being influenced by Detroit lobbyists, referring to “little giveaways to the auto industry” in the latest guidelines.
Schwarzenegger himself began using automakers as a foil last year, declaring that his message was “Arnold to Michigan: Get off your butt.” The governor, however, has not totally broken with Detroit – he took a $25,000 donation from General Motors in March.
Even if Schwarzenegger believes he can count on McCain, Obama or Clinton to reverse course from the current White House next year, Nichols said it remains necessary to fight the Bush administration to avoid legal precedents against California from being set.
Bill Magavern, executive director of Sierra Club California, noted that the 2002 California law in limbo was set to affect 2009 vehicles, which will start being built later this year.
“It would be a mistake to be complacent and say, ‘Well, this wrong-headed president is in his last year and therefore we’re not going to worry too much,’ ” Magavern said. “It’s no small matter to reverse the direction of a federal agency, even when there’s a change of administration.”
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Call Kevin Yamamura, Bee Capitol Bureau, (916) 326-5548.