Climate Law Update: Climate Change & Sustainable Energy News : Thelen Reid Law Firm : Renewable Energy, Construction, Project Finance Lawyers & Attorneys

U.S. Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne, under pressure from the federal courts and environmentalists, Wednesday declared the polar bear threatened because of loss of its sea ice habitat. But he also acted to make sure the move wouldn't trigger broader efforts to aimed at tackling global warming.

Environmental groups that had waged a multi-year battle to cover the animal under the Endangered Species Act offered limited praise for the determination. However, they also issued none-too-veiled threats to continue litigating to beef up the protections. Activists had clearly hoped a listing could be employed in the broader fight against climate change (see Climate Law Update story here). 

"We're going to challenge any attempt to improperly reduce protections for the polar bear," Kassie Siegel,  a California attorney for the Center for Biological Diversity, told Climate Law Update. The group was one of the organizations that had won a court ruling last month demanding the government make a final decision on listing the bear under the endangered species law by May 15 (see Climate Law Update story here). A hearing in the case was scheduled for Thursday in federal court in Oakland, California.

Late in the day, the environmental plaintiffs fired their first legal shot (see court filing here). They accused the government of dragging its feet so much that the listing would not actually meet the May 15 deadline. They also took issue with other parts of the government's action, including its failure to include protections for the bears' "critical habitat."   

Kempthorne made his announcement at a news conference in in Washington, D.C. (see press release here; text of Kempthorne statement here; access formal documents here). He cited the melting of the bear's icy habitat for his determination that the animal deserved protection under what he called "perhaps the least flexible law Congress has ever enacted." But Kempthorne added he was taking several administrative steps to "make certain the ESA isn't abused" to set policies to control global warming, such as controlling emissions from cars or power plants. That echoes a position taken by President Bush recently (see Climate Law Update story here).

Said Kempthorne:

"This decision may not be a popular decision; but I believe it is the right decision. I also believe it is right to put into place what tools I had available to me so we do not have the unintended consequences. We have seen that some have suggested that this will now be the opportunity to regulate greenhouse gases. It's not. This is not the tool." 

A listing of threatened is second only to a classification of endangered under the law. The bear becomes the first mammal to be granted protection under the statute for reasons related to climate change.

Kempthorne's decision drew criticism both from environmentalists and their allies in Congress but also from conservative critics of climate change science.

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California's approaches to cleaning up automobile greenhouse gas emissions are better than those recently proposed by the federal government -- according to California.

The California Air Resources Board this week released a new study that it said "conclusively demonstrates" that the state's mandate for cutting tailpipe emissions believed to contribute to global warming achieved more than 40 percent greater reductions than new federal mileage standards announced last month (see press statement here; full report here).

The document constituted the latest salvo in the continuing war of words -- and lawyers -- between the state and federal government over how best to address potentially climate-changing pollution from cars and other sources. California is currently in court challenging the Bush administration's refusal to allow the state's vehicle standards to proceed (see Climate Law Update story here). State officials have also reacted negatively to the new federal plan, seeing in it a poison pill that would prevent California and other states from moving forward with stricter controls (see Climate Law Update story here).

Release of the new report came as automobile executives and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger met at the state Capitol on the issue. According to some press reports, the leaders discussed some cooperative approaches to reducing emissions, even as they appeared to give little ground elsewhere (see San Diego Union-Tribune story here).   

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A new lawsuit filed by environmentalists challenges Arctic oil and gas exploration efforts the groups contend threaten marine mammals such as whales.

Plaintiffs include organizations that have already sought to force new federal protections for polar bears and other animals because of alleged threats from climate change, a move that could also have implications for oil development in the region.

Filed in U.S. District Court in Alaska on Monday the lawsuit asks a judge to rule that federal authorizations allowing the explorations in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas by Shell  and BP were issued before proper environmental reviews were conducted and that the actions could seriously harm marine mammals. The plaintiffs also asked for a preliminary injunction blocking the activities, at least some of which were planned for this summer (see lawsuit text here; motion for preliminary injunction here).

Seismic surveys planned by the companies "will result in excessive noise pollution in Arctic waters that have not been subjected to such levels of concurrent seismic noise pollution for at least 15 years, if ever," claimed the documents filed by the groups. The plaintiffs, which also include a native village, focused primarily on concerns for the health of such animals as whales and seals. Polar bears are only briefly mentioned in the lawsuit, as inhabitants of both of the seas year-round. 

Officials of the federal Minerals Management Service, which issued the seismic survey permits, and the National Marine Fisheries Service, which was also named as a defendant, told Climate Law Update they would have no immediate comment on the case.  Both oil companies, neither of which was named in the lawsuit, also declined comment specifically on the case but they each defended the environmental soundness of their exploration practices.   

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The U.S. Department of Interior had only a muted reaction to Monday's federal court ruling demanding a quick decision on whether to protect the polar bear under the Endangered Species Act because of global warming. But that didn't keep the department's critics from weighing in.

A spokesman for the department headed by Secretary Dirk Kempthorne (pictured), in an e-mail forwarded Tuesday to Climate Law Update, gave little clue as to the government's next step in aftermath of U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken's ruling:

"We have received the court's decision and we are reviewing it. We will evaluate the legal options and will decide the appropriate course of action." 

Wilken Monday ruled in favor of a number of environmental groups and ordered the department to decide by May 15 whether to shield the animals under the endangered species law. The judge, who sits in Oakland, Calif., also rejected calls by the government, which has previously proposed designating the bears as "threatened," to delay the effect of its decision (see Climate Law Update story below). 

The ruling gave those skeptical of the agency's motives plenty of ammunition, and also a chance to talk about the larger implications of a listing under the powerful federal statute. They also seemed to have little doubt that the government will extend law's protections to the bear.

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A federal judge in California late Monday gave the federal government barely two weeks to make a final decision on protecting the polar bear under the Endangered Species Act, a move that could have significant implications for regulatory efforts to combat climate change.

Environmentalists pushing for protections for the iconic animals have accused the Bush administration of dragging its feet on the matter in order to avoid interfering with plans to explore for oil in parts of the bears' far northern home. Federal officials had concluded that oil and gas development would not pose a threat to the bears throughout their range. 

U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken (access biography here), in a 10-page decision, told the Interior Department to issue a final ruling on the matter by no later than May 15 (see text of order here). The judge also required that whatever decision the government makes would take effect immediately at the time it is issued. Additionally, she wrote that she did not need to have the parties come to court to argue the matter because "timeliness is essential, the issues are not complex and the parties are generally in agreement" on the issue.

The ruling was a win for the environmental groups including the Center for Biological Diversity, which has been pushing since 2005 to list the polar bear as an endangered species because of the effects of global warming on the bears' icy habitat. The interior department's U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, as part of a prior court agreement, had proposed to list the bear as a threatened species last year (see text of proposal here) but then took no final action (see Climate Law Update stories here and here).

 

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Attorneys for the Interior Department have asked a federal judge to give officials until June 30 to make a final decision on whether to protect the polar bear under the Endangered Species Act because of climate change.

Environmentalists immediately accused government bureaucrats of dragging their feet to avoid any interference with oil explorations planned for the bears’ habitat. 

The lawyers representing Interior and its Fish and Wildlife Service asked U.S. District Court Judge Claudia Wilken of Oakland, Calif., to give the service about 10 additional weeks to make up its mind whether to list the bear under the law (see text here). Officials have already taken preliminary steps to list the animal as “threatened” but no final action has occurred.

Any decision to protect the bear under the endangered species statute could have widespread ramifications, by bringing the law into play in a variety of government decisions potentially affecting global warming, and more locally on such issues as oil and gas development in the Arctic. The lawsuit noted that earlier this year, the federal government held a lease sale offering about 30 million acres “of prime polar bear habitat” in the Chukchi Sea for oil and gas development. 

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President Bush Wednesday set a goal of halting the increase in the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions by 2025, a significantly less ambitious objective than that established by some of the states, including California.

But in a speech in the White House Rose Garden, Bush also opened the door to a binding international agreement on cutting emissions.

In his speech, the president warned against raising taxes or imposing mandates or demands for “sudden and drastic emissions cuts that have no chance of being realized and every chance of hurting our economy.” He also argued in favor of promoting “emission-free nuclear power” and encouraging investments needed to produce electricity from coal without releasing carbon (see full text of statement here; see White House fact sheet here).

Bush called the new goal to stop the growth of U.S. greenhouse emissions by 2025 “a major step forward in America’s efforts to address climate change.” Yet he outlined few specific steps, beyond some already taken such as requiring better automobile fuel efficiency, to achieve the target. Among his goals, he said, was to create a new incentive to make the development, commercialization and use of new lower-emission technologies more competitive.

By contrast, California’s anti-global warming law, AB 32, requires the state to roll back its emissions of heat-trapping gases to 1990 levels by 2020, an estimated 25 percent reduction. Even further cuts would be required later under an order issued by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (see text here). Additionally, all three major presidential candidates have endorsed emissions limits and trading programs.

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A California lawyer who has closely followed California's energy regulation, and once was part of it, has concluded that state lawmakers handed Attorney General Jerry Brown a victory last year when they passed a new law in reaction to his controversial greenhouse gas litigation.

The statute  was passed as SB 97 (see full text here). The legislation codifies Brown's argument that that increased emissions of the gases and their effects constitute an environmental impact that must be considered by agencies issuing permits that are subject to review under the California Environmental Quality Act. That's according to Thelen Reid Brown Raysman & Steiner attorney Peter V. Allen (pictured) in an article originally published in  Ecology Law Currents, vol. 35 (2008). The publication is produced at the University of California-Berkeley's law school Boalt Hall (see full article here).

The law was approved last year after Brown sparked controversy in the Legislature by weighing in on county land use and transportation plans and other proposals that warranted scrutiny under the state environmental law. Brown ultimately sued San Bernardino County and reached a settlement requiring the county to take account of greenhouse gases and come up with a plan to reduce them (see text of lawsuit here; text of settlement here; press statement here).

Republicans in the Legislature had held up the state budget and attempted to pass a law limiting Brown's power to bring such lawsuits in the future, a clash that ultimately produced SB 97. Critics viewed Brown's work as a premature effort to enforce the state's law limiting greenhouse emissions, AB 32. Brown, who has maintained the state needs to move forward quickly with efforts to reduce heat-trapping gases, argued that San Bernardino had not adequately analyzed the effects of development on global warming.  

In addition to constituting "a win for the attorney general's position," the bill also will make many CEQA reviews more complex and will require more costly mitigation measures for many projects, Allen wrote. But he noted it should also provide some potential opportunities, especially for renewable energy providers. 

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Global warming is bad, and developing renewable energy to help solve the problem is good, right? While that might be a popular view, the reality is a bit more complicated, as experts in the field have begun noting with some frequency lately.

Talk of what UCLA School of Law Professor Ann Carlson (pictured) calls “localized environmental values clashes” over renewable projects was in the air at a recent conference at the University of California-Berkeley’s law school, Boalt Hall.

Speakers at the two-day event, “California and the Future of Environmental Law and Policy,” noted that, in particular, legal and policy fights over transmission lines pose a significant challenge for renewable development. Among them was Karen Douglas, who formerly spearheaded California climate change efforts for the  group Environmental Defense (now known as Environmental Defense Fund). She is now a member of the California Energy Commission which, among other duties, licenses large new thermal power plants in the state, as well as the transmission lines connecting them to the grid. Douglas crystallized the issue this way:

“It’s kind of a different challenge to do renewables because you’ve got to generate the power where the renewable resources are and then bring it where the people are. So that means often a lot of power lines. People don’t want that through their neighborhoods. It’s hard to site and hard to build and so on, so one issue is transmission.”

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At least U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Stephen L. Johnson, presumably, still has friends in the executive branch. Because he’s facing some opposition in the other two arenas of government.

The EPA, which this week landed in court action because of Johnson’s decision to take his time to study whether to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, could find itself getting new marching orders from Congress.

Two senators, one a Democrat and the other a Republican, have announced they're backing legislation to set a 60-day deadline for the agency to complete a critical step on the road to restricting climate-changing gases (see press release and text of bill). The measure sponsored by Sens. Dianne Feinstein, D-California (pictured), and Olympia Snow, R-Maine, would also require the EPA to reconsider its denial of California’s attempt to regulate tailpipe emissions believed to contribute to global warming (see previous Climate Law Update story).

The EPA had only a bare-bones response to the announcement.

"We will review any legislation that is passed by Congress," wrote Jonathan Shrader, the agency's press secretary, in an e-mail to Climate Law Update.   

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A legal action led by Massachusetts and supported by 17 other states and nearly a dozen environmental organizations was launched Wednesday to force the Environmental Protection Agency to issue a critical document that would trigger nationwide regulation of greenhouse gases.

The new move, in the form of a petition for a writ of mandamus, was filed in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. It sought to require the EPA to put forward its formal determination of whether emissions of the climate-changing gases endanger the public’s health or welfare. Such an “endangerment” finding, the filing  charged, has already been made but it is being withheld (see text).

“It is a necessary and critical step, which is why the administration is making its stand there,” said David Bookbinder, chief climate attorney for the Sierra Club, one of the groups filing the action, during a nationwide conference call with reporters. “They know once the endangerment finding is made they’re obligated to begin controlling greenhouse gases.”

He acknowledged that no final regulation was likely to be in place until after a new administration comes into office. However, he and others said that it was important to move forward now to get the process started.

“Time is not on our side,” said James Milkey, chief of the environmental protection division under Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley (pictured).

 

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No surprise in this, except perhaps for the quick timing, but last week’s decision by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to go slow on regulating greenhouse gases looks like it's landing the agency back in court.

California Attorney General Jerry Brown, along with attorneys representing the state of Massachusetts, the Sierra Club and others are expected to announce Wednesday new legal action to force the EPA to move forward. The action coincides with the one-year anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Massachusetts v. EPA, which held that the agency had the authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions as pollutants under the Clean Air Act. In a statement, Brown’s office said Tuesday the legal maneuver would be taken to force the EPA “to obey” the decision.    

EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson (pictured) sparked the ire of Democrats and environmentalists – and the praise of industry groups – by announcing that he wanted to avoid “rushing to judgment” on the issue. He laid out an administrative process to study the matter, citing the fact the EPA’s decision could have widespread ramifications beyond automobiles, which had been the immediate focus of the Supreme Court decision (see previous Climate Law Update stories here and here).

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An attorney for one environmental group that has actively sought to bring the tools of endangered species protections into the fight against global warming says the tactic could have multiple effects.

Brendan Cummings, a lawyer for the Center for Biological Diversity, suggested in an interview with Climate Law Update that the organization’s recent success in getting the National Marine Fisheries Service to examine climate-related endangered species protection for several species of seals could produce impacts both locally and much broader in scope. The agency last week announced it would review the ribbon seal, a mammal that inhabits Alaska’s Bering Sea, for listing under the Endangered Species Act, as well as three other seal species: bearded, spotted and ringed (see press release and formal notice).

The fisheries service said it was acting on a petition presented last year by the environmental organization asking it to list the seal as threatened or endangered (see text of petition). Last week's statement by the agency came a few days after the environmental group threatened to bring a lawsuit to force the government to act.  

At a regional level, the group’s petition to the government agency cited threats to the seals from such sources as oil and gas development, commercial fishing and Russian harvesting of the animals. But it also warned that the ice on which the seals live is rapidly melting due to global warming.

 

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U.S. Transportation Department officials Friday formally took steps to begin complying with a federal appellate court ruling last year that, among other things, required the agency to consider global warming when setting fuel economy standards for certain motor vehicles.

The move by the department’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration came a day after the California Air Resources Board reduced its previous requirements for the number of zero-emission motor vehicles that manufacturers must sell in the state in coming years. However, the air board’s chairwoman Mary Nichols also moved toward streamlining California’s automobile emissions standards, including those that deal specifically with greenhouse gases, so that they synchronize (see press release).

At the national level, the highway transportation agency published a notice in the Federal Register (see text) that it was moving ahead with plans to prepare an environmental impact statement on its fuel economy standards for cars and light trucks. The notice said the agency in preparing the document would “consider issues raised” in the litigation that resulted in a Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling last year throwing out the Bush administration’s earlier standards governing sport utility vehicles and other light trucks such as pickups. That ruling was based, in part on the fact that that officials gave no value to carbon dioxide emissions reductions (see text of ruling). The court ordered the agency to come up with new standards and to prepare a full environmental impact statement.

Friday’s notice did not say precisely when all the work would be completed, only that it expects to prepare a draft environmental statement for public comment and a final document to support the new standards “later this year.” It said the document would "consider the potential environmental impacts of new fuel economy standards for model year 2011-2015 passenger cars and light trucks" that the highway safety agency would be proposing pursuant to last year's Energy Independence and Security Act. That new law mandates improved vehicle mileage (see President Bush's press release).

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Stephen L. Johnson, the administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, might be feeling a bit besieged after the reaction to his decision to go slow on regulating greenhouse gases. But he’s still got friends in the industrial community and elsewhere.

“I think he made a very sensible move,” Hank Cox, a spokesman for the National Association of Manufacturers, told Climate Law Up date Friday. The association, headed by former Michigan Gov. John Engler (pictured), has itself been urging a cautious approach to addressing climate change and it recently released a study warning of major economic and employment losses if Congress enacts legislation such as the Lieberman-Warner bill (see recent Climate Law Update story), which would establish a national emissions cap-and-trade system.

Johnson provoked outrage among Democrats and environmental organizations when he informed lawmakers he was going to take more time to study the regulation of greenhouse gases before acting. Some critics accused the Bush administration of acting according to an “industry script” on the issue.

Johnson’s action came nearly a year after a 2007 U.S. Supreme Court decision, Massachusetts v. EPA, which said the agency had the authority to regulate the emissions believed to contribute to global warming as pollutants, and it ordered its officials to look into such questions as whether the gases pose a threat to people. Critics threatened a new round of legal action to force the EPA to move on the issue (see Thursday’s Climate Law Update story).

Cox said he believed his organization made its views known to the EPA before Johnson announced his decision Thursday.

“I’m sure we did,” Cox said.

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U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Stephen L. Johnson, declaring that he wanted to avoid “rushing to judgment on a single issue,” informed lawmakers Thursday he'll be taking additional time to study the critical issue of whether to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. Outraged critics, including Sen. Barbara Boxer (pictured), said the move makes it virtually certain no action will be taken during the remainder of President Bush's term in office.

Johnson, in a letter to key members of Congress (see text), outlined an administrative procedure that would ramp up this spring and would then be followed by a period in which the public could comment. It was not immediately known how long the process would take to produce a final decision, although skeptics predicted it would push any ultimate determination into the next administration. Environmental groups vowed to return to court to force the agency to act.

The announcement, coming nearly a year after the U.S. Supreme Court in its landmark Massachusetts v. EPA ruling held the agency had the authority to regulate the gases as pollutants under the Clean Air Act, immediately provoked the condemnation of environmentalists and others. The Supreme Court ruling did not require the agency to issue regulations but it told the EPA it had to consider such issues as whether public health was endangered. While the ruling came in the context of regulating emissions from motor vehicles but many now want the EPA to wield broad control over substances believed to contribute to climate change, from whatever source.

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The coal war, it seems, is heating up by the day. And the battlegrounds are not always in places commonly associated with aggressive environmentalism

Take Kansas and Utah, for instance.

The Kansas City star reports that lawmakers are trying to revive a modified version of a bill vetoed last week by Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius that would have allowed construction of two new coal-fired plants over the greenhouse gas-related opposition of a state regulator.  Among her objections was the lack of support for wind power in the legislation (see text of vetoed bill and Sebelius press release with attached veto message). 

Farther west, a dispute over a proposed new coal plant in Utah is creating a legal vortex drawing industry, environmentalists and other states, including California, into a debate over the extent of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to regulate emissions blamed for climate change.

All of this comes against a background of work in Congress on greenhouse legislation that would establish a market system for reducing emissions (cited by Sebelius), and more coal-specific developments, including a recent decision by a federal agency to back away from funding such projects (see recent Climate Law Update story). Lawmakers are also working on other federal legislation that would allow new coal plants to move forward only if they can capture and store the vast majority of their carbon emissions (see press release and text of bill).

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Top California officials Thursday laid out a vision of a reduced-carbon future that included some very un-California-sounding notions, such as denser cities and cars driven fewer miles.

“I’m not even sure this is politically helpful to you,” California Attorney General Jerry Brown told about 200 local government officials and planning experts at a gathering in Oakland. “It may actually be harmful.”

But Brown and Mary Nichols, chairwoman of the California Air Resources Board, outlined similar notions of the challenge facing the state as it grapples with reducing greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and the 2006 emissions-cutting law AB 32. The simple message: Patterns of development and urban and suburban living likely will have to change, possibly dramatically.

Both Brown and Nichols have been deeply involved in the effort for some time, although they have not always seen eye-to-eye. Brown, under the auspices of the California Environmental Quality Act, has been pressuring local governments and industry to come to grips with greenhouse emissions and the mandates of AB 32 in planning efforts and when contemplating new facilities. The board Nichols chairs has been given primary responsibility for carrying out the greenhouse gas law, and by this June is expected to unveil a proposed blueprint for achieving the statute’s requirement that emissions be reduced to 1990 levels by 2020. Thursday’s session was the first of five workshops on the issue planned for local government officials this spring.

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Environmental groups Monday (March 10) sued to prod the federal government into listing polar bears as threatened due to the climate change-related loss of sea ice, which is vital to the animals' survival. Such a move could have far-reaching regulatory implications beyond the fact that the iconic bear would be the first mammal receiving Endangered Species Act protection because of global warming.

Some environmentalists and activists see the species law as providing a powerful tool for controlling greenhouse gas emissions in addition to playing its traditional role in protecting vulnerable animal and plant populations. The latest lawsuit comes amid a flurry of similar litigation and other moves to press government agencies and industry on alleged damage to animals as well as humans, including native Alaskan villagers. 

"We already have laws that will help us do a lot on global warming, if we just enforce them," with perhaps the most important being the Endangered Species Act, said Kassia Siegel, an attorney for the Center for Biological Diversity, one of the plaintiffs in the polar bear case.  

According to the newest lawsuit (which can be viewed here) filed in federal court in Oakland, the Bush administration missed a January deadline for making a final determination on the bear’s status. The Interior Department in 2006, under court pressure from environmental groups, announced a proposal to list the bears as threatened. A spokeswoman for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the branch of the Interior Department most directly involved, said it was not known when a final decision would be made.

But also on Monday, an official of the Interior Department’s inspector general’s office confirmed that a preliminary inquiry had been launched into the delay in making the decision. Such a probe had been requested by environmental groups.

“It is at the very, very earliest stages,” wrote Kris Kolesnik, associate inspector general for external affairs in an e-mail to Climate Law Update.    

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Environmentalists are claiming victory in their efforts to at least temporarily shelve federal financial support for rural coal-fired power plants the critics believe contribute to climate change. An official of the Rural Utilities Service,  an arm of the U.S. Department of Agriculture and a key financial player in such facilities, recently revealed that service would be "precluded from financing base load generation plants" both this year and likely next.

The government's decision has already helped lead to the demise of at least one coal-fired plant and has raised financing questions about several others.

An early word came in a Feb. 19 letter from James M. Andrew, administrator of utilities programs for the RUS, to the head of a Montana electric cooperative that had hoped to win financing from the agency for its Highwood Generating Station, a coal-fired plant. In the letter, Andrew pulled the plug on the federal service's involvement in the 250-megawatt project. The letter also mentioned the "uncertainty" posed by pending litigation.

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Officials of the Bay Area Air Quality Management District in San Francisco are pursuing what they believe to be the first regulatory fee on greenhouse gas emissions in the United States.

The new fee, which would be set at 4.2 cents per metric ton, would generate an estimated $1 million annually, according to a district spokeswoman, Karen Schkolnick. The money would go toward the district's Climate Protection Program, for projects that  include developing a regional inventory of the gases.  The proposal is laid out in a series of documents, including the planned rule itself, a fact sheet and an announcement of a workshop that occurred Feb. 25.

 

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U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Stephen Johnson, who has been under fire from environmentalists, politicians and even some agency staffers for his decision last year to deny California's greenhouse emissions standards for cars, issued his formal reasoning for the rejection Friday (Feb. 29).

In short, there's nothing so special about the state's problems relating to global warming that means California ought to be able to go it alone in regulating such emissions, according to Johnson. California had sought permission under a section of the Clean Air Act that gives California, and by extension other states, authority to set its own pollution standards for motor vehicles. In a 47-page filing headed for the Federal Register, Johnson (pictured; EPA photograph) wrote his decision was based on his finding that California does not need the standards to meet "compelling and extraordinary conditions":

"While I recognize that global climate change is a serious challenge, I have concluded that section 209(b) [of the Clean Air Act] was intended to allow California to promulgate state standards applicable to emissions from new motor vehicles to address pollution problems that are local or regional. I do not believe section 209(b)(1)(B) was intended to allow California to promulgate state standards for emissions from new motor vehicles designed to address global climate change problems; nor, in the alternative, do I believe that the effects of climate change in California are compelling and extraordinary compared to the effects in the rest of the country. Based on this finding, pursuant to section 209(b)(1) of the Clean Air Act (Act), CARB’s waiver request for its GHG standards for new motor vehicles must be denied."

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The Wall Street Journal (Feb. 19) recounts the saga of U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Stephen Johnson (pictured at left), whom it calls a "a rare breed of Washington career" bureaucrat who survived multiple administrations but who now finds himself a target of the Democrats. A key issue: Johnson's decision last December to reject California's attempt to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from motor vehicles.

Johnson, whom the newspaper noted is the "first career EPA employee in the agency's nearly 38- year history to be chosen as its administrator," is also facing another decision, to determine whether greenhouse pollution endangers public health or welfare. If the answer is yes, the Journal reported, the agency would be required by law to regulate "a vast part of U.S. industry." Johnson has not said when he will make that decision.

 

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California Attorney General Jerry Brown Tuesday (Feb. 19) sent a letter urging hundreds of local officials to attend a series of regional meetings to help them figure out how to comply with the state's global warming law, AB 32, and its basic environ