EPA sets up fight over car goals
Move threatens to strip California of ability under Clean Air Act to set stricter emissions standards
The Trump administration openly threatened one of the cornerstones of California’s environmental protections Monday, saying that it may revoke the state’s ability under the Clean Air Act to impose stricter standards than the federal government sets for vehicle emissions.
The announcement came as the administration confirmed it is tearing up landmark fuel economy rules pushing automakers to manufacture cleaner burning cars and SUVs.
“Cooperative federalism doesn’t mean that one state can dictate standards for the rest of the country,” Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt said in a statement.
“EPA will set a national standard for greenhouse gas emissions that allows auto manufacturers to make cars that people both want and can afford — while still expanding environmental and safety benefits of newer cars. It’s in everyone’s best interest to have a national standard, and we look forward to working with all states, including California, as we work to finalize that standard.”
The threat against California’s decades-old independent authority on clean air rules came on the same day that the administration filed suit to try to overturn another of the state’s environmental protections — a measure passed last year by the Legislature that seeks to limit the federal government’s ability to sell public lands to private interests by requiring that the state be given a right of first refusal on federal land sales within California’s borders.
The Justice Department asked a federal court in Sacramento to overturn the state law, saying it interfered with Congress’ constitutional power to dispose of federal property.
Together, the two moves marked another es-
calation of the battle between the state and federal governments over environmental policies.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein said in an interview with the Bay Area News Group editorial board that she expected Pruitt would attempt to revoke California’s waiver to set its own fuel standards.
“I think he’ll try,” Feinstein said. If he does, “We should make a huge fuss, the biggest fuss we can.”
The fuel standards that the Trump administration is targeting are “what’s going to get us the biggest bang for the buck in terms of automobile efficiency,” Feinstein said. “This is done based on technology and available science, and he wants to cancel that out.”
“The years of litigation and investment uncertainty will be far harder on the auto industry than simply living up to the fuel economy standards they once embraced,” Feinstein also warned in a statement.
“The EPA is willfully ignoring the fact that these emission standards are working. Cars are becoming more fuel-efficient and consumers are saving money at the pump. … Right now, car manufacturers are on target to exceed 40 mpg by 2020 and 50 mpg by 2025. There simply is no reason to roll back that progress.”
Gov. Jerry Brown blasted the federal statement on auto emission rules as a “belated April Fools’ Day trick.”
“This cynical and meretricious abuse of power will poison our air and jeopardize the health of all Americans,” the governor said in a statement.
Pruitt’s announcement said that the administration will abandon the federal goal of having vehicles average 55 mpg by 2025. That target will be replaced with a weaker fuel economy standard that the administration will settle on at a later date.
The action sets up the administration for a confrontation with California and a dozen other states that use the state’s emissions standards. Under the Clean Air Act, California is the only state that can independently adopt its own emissions standards, but other states can then adopt them. Several of the states that have done so have vowed to defy the administration’s effort to weaken mileage standards.
“We’re ready to file suit if needed to protect these critical standards and to fight the administration’s war on our environment. California didn’t become the sixth largest economy in the world by spectating,” state Attorney General Xavier Becerra said in a statement.
The current national fuel economy targets, which were championed by California and adopted by the Obama administration, represent the single biggest action the federal government has taken to curb greenhouse gases. They are crucial for California and other states to meet their goals for climate action and to reduce smog and other air pollution.
The targets are also essential to an effort led by Brown and others to carry the country toward meeting the obligations in the Paris accord on climate change that the Trump administration is refusing to honor. The administration’s action came at the behest of automakers, which say that the 55 mpg standard will impose too heavy a cost.
But an all-out fight between the federal and state governments over California’s power to set emissions standards could backfire on the automakers. Pruitt’s legal ability to revoke California’s authority is uncertain, and any such move could be tied up in court for years.
In the meantime, auto companies would be faced with the complicated and costly prospect of building and selling two different sets of cars — one for California and the other states that follow its standards, and one for the rest of the country.
The resisting states account for more than a third of all car sales, making it difficult — if not impossible — for automakers to take advantage of looser rules if those states don’t go along. Although automakers have been hopeful some deal could be brokered, perhaps with California agreeing to weaken the more immediate targets in exchange for federal buy-in to more aggressive goals through 2030, that is looking increasingly unlikely.