23 governors pledge to back California model
WASHINGTON — Citing climatedamaging tailpipe emissions, 23 governors signed a pledge Tuesday backing California leaders in their showdown with the Trump administration over its plans to relax vehicle mileage standards.
The pledge by leaders of the states and Puerto Rico, most of them Democrats, comes as the administration seeks to ease tougher mileage standards laid out by former President Barack Obama as part of his efforts against climate change. Legal challenges to Trump’s policy proposal threaten to disrupt the auto industry for years, and an influential auto industry trade group is renewing its appeal for the compromise.
The administration says American consumers increasingly want bigger, lessefficient SUVs and pickup trucks. It argues that demanding evermore fuelefficient vehicles will drive up automobile costs and keep lesssafe, older vehicles on the road longer; opponents challenge that claim.
The governors’ pledge commits to sticking broadly to the prePresident Trump mileage goals, a program of annual tightening in mileage standards that reduce climate-changing carbon emissions. Transportation and the power sector are the largest sources of heattrapping fossil fuel pollution in the U.S.
At stake is California’s ability to set its own emissions and fuel economy standards, a power granted by Congress in the Clean Air Act to combat the state’s smog problems in the 1970s.
Besides California and Puerto Rico, the pledge was signed by the leaders of Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin.