California may have edge in climate battle
Landmark policy Pruitt questions has been resilient
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s nominee to run the Environmental Protection Agency survived a rancorous committee vote last week, putting him on the path to full Senate confirmation and a confrontation with California.
Scott Pruitt, who oil and gas companies are betting will help them reassert dominance over the energy economy, has cast doubt on California’s power to force automakers to build more efficient, cleanerburning cars.
But he soon may learn that battles like the one he appears poised to launch can be full of unpleasant surprises.
The landmark environmental policy that the EPA nominee called into question — giving California unique authority to set tough rules for car and truck emissions — has proved resilient. So has California. Ready to fight
Many such provocations by past administrations eager to flex their executive muscle have gone sideways.
They have bogged down previous White Houses in yearslong, politically bruising regulatory and legal disputes, during which the president who set out to teach an early lesson to assertive states ends up getting schooled by them.
“Announcing that you are going to give your supporters what they want by picking off a few high-profile policies and rescinding them is really easy,” said Jody Freeman, a professor at Harvard Law who served as White House counselor for energy and climate change under the Obama administration. “Doing it is much harder.”
California is particularly well-prepared, after honing its skills fighting Washington during the presidency of George W. Bush. The target Pruitt is eyeing may be alluring for conservatives and climate skeptics, but it is well-fortified.
The federal authority California was granted to set its own, tough standards for vehicle emissions dates back 50 years to when it was written into the Clean Air Act.
It since has become a foundation of California’s fight to curb climate change.
The Bush administration’s resistance to letting California use the waiver to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles touched off a fierce court fight that ultimately strengthened California’s position and could make the policy impossible to water down, short of an unlikely congressional rewrite of the landmark Clean Air Act.
The California standard the Bush White House resisted ultimately got adopted for the entire nation when Barack Obama took office.
The danger for California now is that the Trump administration looks inclined to move in a different direction, opting for federal rules weaker than those California wants. If it does, California almost certainly would invoke its waiver to keep the tougher standard in place, as would a dozen other states that traditionally have exercised their right under federal law to embrace California’s rules.
Pressed multiple times during his confirmation hearing about whether he would challenge California’s authority to keep its own rules, Pruitt demurred, saying that would be decided through an administrative process.
“One would not want to presume the outcome,” Pruitt said. Trump ‘hostility’
In Sacramento, environmental litigators at the state Justice Department already are mapping out strategy and former U.S. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. has been hired to confront the Trump administration on exactly this type of threat.
Even so, California is in for a rough stretch. It will be investing considerable effort in fighting with Washington instead of working with it to advance mutual interests. State officials may need to adjust their path to fulfilling ambitious goals on climate change.
“Because of the hostility of the Trump administration, none of us think it’s a good time to submit a waiver request,” said Bill Magavern, policy director for the Los Angeles-based Coalition for Clean Air.