Yesterday, President Obama granted California and 13 other states a waiver to set strict vehicle emissions standards on their own. The administration is actually going to let states move forward and pass emission standards that might be even tougher than federal standards. Finally! Something resembling sense on environmental issues is coming from the administration in my country.
President Obama moved forward two strokes for the environment as he had the Environmental Protection Agency review a California application to regulate greenhouse gases and told the Department of Transportation to begin implementing fuel efficiency standards passed last year but never implemented by the Bush administration. In 2007, the Bush administration blocked California lawmakers from requiring automobile manufacturers to reduce tailpipe emissions by 30 percent by 2016. President Obama’s directive clears the way for California, Arizona, Connecticut, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Washington DC, Vermont and Washington to adopt stricter standards than the federal government requires under the Clean Air Act. Other states, including Florida, Iowa, North Carolina, and Utah, are considering adopting the program as well. Together this would represent over half of the U.S. car market. The California Air Resources Board estimates the new rules would cut global warming pollution from automobiles by 18 percent by 2020 and 27 percent by 2030.
Pretty impressive numbers and the directive gives me hope that President Obama is interested in taking immediate action on global warming and where possible letting states move ahead before the federal government has time to do so on their own.
So, what next? This really is a great start, now we need President Obama to fulfill some of his campaign promises like putting a million plug-in electric vehicles on the road. And then we need to him show that he is serious about the science by raising gas mileage standards to 50 miles per gallon by 2028 and committing to cutting greenhouse emissions in the U.S. by at least 20-23 percent from current levels by 2020—the level scientists are saying is needed to prevent the worst effects of global warming.