Trump muddies the air

In announcing on Wednesday his determination to revoke California’s long-standing authority to set its own air pollution standards, President Donald Trump finds himself arrayed against the plain language of the Clean Air Act, California’s historical role as a laboratory for tough new environmental rules and the express wishes of several major automakers and two-thirds of the American people.

It is, further, one more intended nail in the coffin of President Barack Obama’s strategy to reduce greenhouse gases and, coming as it does on the eve of a big United Nations conference on global warming, a thumb in the eye to the rest of the world.

A monumental legal battle lies ahead. California’s authority to set its own pollution standards dates to the 1960s, when the state passed laws to deal with its crippling smog problem. The federal Clean Air Act of 1970 codified that special authority, as long as the state could show a compelling need for standards stricter than the federal government’s. Congress has repeatedly reaffirmed that right, and in 1977, it said other states could legally opt in to California’s standards. Thirteen have now done so.

Over time, strategies adopted in California to control smog-producing pollutants became standard across the country. So, too, with carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas. California’s decision in 2002 to add greenhouse gases to the list of pollutants it wanted to control — a decision approved by the Obama administration seven years later — arguably accelerated the push for zero-emission and low-emission vehicles like plug-in hybrids. (Tailpipe emissions are now the nation’s single biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions.)

One problem with California’s aggressiveness is that it created a two-tier market for automakers — one set of cars for California and states that had joined in, another for the rest of the country. To address that, in 2009 Obama forged a major agreement with all the players — industry, California and the federal agencies with control over vehicles — to harmonize competing demands and, in effect, create a single market. As part of the deal, he began a series of executive actions to increase fuel efficiency and decrease global warming emissions — culminating, late in his term, in a rule that required automakers to hit an average of about 54.5 mpg by the model year 2025.

As with nearly everything connected with his predecessor, Trump hated the rule, and in August of last year proposed freezing fuel economy improvements at about 37 mpg, while also revoking California’s special authority. California said it wouldn’t budge; negotiations ensued, but nothing happened.

Sensing that California could ultimately withstand any challenge, four major automakers negotiated their own deal with the state, pledging to build cars that would be nearly as clean and efficient as those mandated by the final Obama rules.

This apostasy appears to have sent the notoriously impatient Trump into a tailspin. In recent months, the administration’s broader effort to roll back Obama’s 54.5-mpg standard has been hamstrung, as agency staff members have struggled to find legal and scientific justifications for the rollback. The process, according to people who’ve followed it, is a mess.

Trump appears to have decided he wanted something right now, and to proceed with one piece of his plan — the move to strip California of its authority to set its own rules.

He and his aides also know they are running out of time to get something to the Supreme Court before his term is out. Many experts see no surefire legal path for him to take, since the Clean Air Act contains no provision for revoking California’s authority. And California’s manifold problems — ranging from sea-level rise to continued poor air quality to water shortages to raging forest fires — would seem to justify its special status.

The stakes here are high for both sides. If Trump wants to kill the Obama clean car standards, he has to kill California’s authority. But in doing so, along with all his other rollbacks, he would further weaken America’s standing in the increasingly urgent fight against climate change.