Ballyhoo in Bali
EPA's global failure on greenhouse gas emissions means dirtier cars - for now
There’s an old saying in politics: “Tell ‘em what they wanna hear.” This conventional wisdom explains why politicians often say one thing and do another, often completely contradictory.
The Bush Administration is no exception, of course, particularly when it comes to global warming. Senator Barbara Boxer learned that when she held a field briefing of the U.S. Senate Environment & Public Works Committee in Los Angeles last week. The committee, which she chairs, delved into the Administration’s recent denial of permission for the state to enforce its ambitious greenhouse gas tailpipe standards for new cars.
What Boxer learned, was that December was a month when there was a major conflict between the Administration’s rhetoric and action. In Washington, Bush’s U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Stephen Johnson subverted California’s standards by denying permission to enforce them.
Meanwhile, Bush dispatched a senior White House official to go halfway around the world to the United Nations conference on climate change in Bali, Indonesia, to assuage international anger about U.S. inaction on global warming. There, the official— James Connaughton, chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality—actually touted California’s tailpipe standards as evidence to the world that the U.S. is working diligently to cut greenhouse gas emissions.
In his latest performance, Connaughton appears to have become the master of ballyhoo on global warming, an old Irish term for “sensational advertising” and “propaganda.” Connaughton is the White House operative who had non-scientists tone down government scientific reports on climate change and then control press contacts with scientists on their research.
In Bali, he sung another tune, telling “the entire world one of the pieces of evidence of American ‘leadership’ on climate change, evidence we were getting ‘real results,’ was that eleven states had adopted California’s clean car standards,” Carl Pope, Sierra Club executive director, told the committee. “The slide he presented actually quantified the carbon dioxide emissions which California’s standards would achieve and took credit for them.”
Pope, who attended the Bali meeting, went on to explain that Connaughton’s presentation was based on an official State Department report to the United Nations, entitled the Fourth Climate Action Report to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. In explaining myriad efforts underway in the U.S. that will help meet the President’s 2002 goal of reducing the carbon intensity of the U.S. by 18 percent by 2012, the document highlights California’s tailpipe standards and the plans of other states, which now number 15, to enforce them within their borders.
Boxer noted that four more states are moving to adopt the standards, which would bring the total to 19. “More than 150 million Americans, a majority of the U.S. population, live in these 19 states,” Boxer said.
The occasion for her field briefing was that last month U.S. EPA Administrator Johnson denied needed permission under the federal Clean Air Act for California and these other states to even enforce the tailpipe standard for automakers. They are supposed to take effect in 2009 and cut greenhouse gases by 30 percent by 2016 from cars, pickup trucks, vans, and sport utility vehicles, former Assemblywoman Fran Pavley testified to the Senate panel.
Johnson’s decision on the standards, which would effectively raise average vehicle mileage to 44 miles per gallon, came after Congress voted last month to boost the federal fuel economy standard for autos to 35 miles a gallon by 2020. He said that the federal increase eliminated the need for California’s standard and will prevent a patchwork of state standards for the auto industry.
The result is that California will come up short on meeting its own greenhouse gas law, which calls for the state to cut the carbon emissions that are causing global warming to their 1990 level by 2020, according to Mary Nichols, chair of the California Air Resources Board. “It would get us half of what we need,” she told the Senate committee.
Moreover, Nichols said that because California’s standard would “yield a better fuel efficiency” it would save drivers money within a year of buying a new car at today’s gas prices. At the same time, she said, it would not restrict choice in vehicle models so drivers would still be able to buy everything from pickup trucks to sport utility vehicles.
Finally, she noted that since the other states are planning to enforce the California requirements, automakers really would not face a patchwork of standards, just two, a national benchmark and a California requirement.
California on January 2 sued the federal EPA to overturn Johnson’s decision. Meanwhile, Boxer plans to haul Johnson before her committee in Washington January 24, potentially under oath, to explain his decision.
“This is nothing more than a backroom deal and Stephen Johnson nothing more than a tool in Washington politics,” concluded Jerry Brown, California attorney general, who is leading the state’s legal battle to overturn the decision. “Sooner or later we’re going to discover real corruption.”
Published: 01/16/2008
DIGG | del.icio.us | REDDIT
