New Haven Independent

Blumenthal’s office, along with AGs from other states, is backing up California in a dispute with the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

In 2002 California passed legislation to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from cars and trucks. California is the only state in the nation to set its own environmental standards, but it needs a waiver from the EPA in order to do so. For perhaps the first time ever, the EPA declined to grant the waiver, under pressure from a coalition of automakers. On Jan. 2, California sued the EPA.

I spoke with Blumenthal, who was in the lead of officials from other states who joined in a lawsuit against the EPA in support of the California standards. He explained the differences between the California law and the bill passed by Congress and signed by President Bush.

Sixteen other states are ready to follow the California standards, which are stricter than the new mileage standards included in the energy bill Congress just passed. The feds are saying the new law will cover the whole nation and they do not want to see a “patchwork” of different regulations around the country, but California and other officials contest that view.

Legally, California needs a waiver from the federal government, which it has been waiting for two years for the federal government to grant it. Now, the federal government, after being ordered by a court to make that decision, has denied that waiver request on Dec. 19. And we are suing the federal government, the EPA, because it is blocking California and 16 other states, at least, from implementing greenhouse gas emission standards for automobiles.

California and the other states have acted simultaneously. California has filed an action in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, and Connecticut along with other states have intervened. We’re formal parties, not just friends of the court, but intervenors and full parties in that lawsuit.

Was this denial the first for any waiver requests from California?

This denial of waiver is the first time in about 30 years that the federal government has denied a waiver. Indeed, it’s the first time in more than 50 waiver requests that the federal government has denied permission to move ahead with these kinds of standards. So it really is an unprecedented gift — actually, we called it an early Christmas gift, when it was done — to the automobile industry.

I understand the EPA is saying now that Congress has passed an energy bill that includes increasing fuel mileage from 25 to 35 miles per gallon by 2020, there’s now no reason for California to need a waiver. Is that right?

The EPA’s excuses for blocking a waiver are really shameful and disgraceful. Their excuse is that there should be a national standard, not a state-by-state regulation, which ignores a clear reality here. The regulations adopted by these states would be, in effect, a national standard, immediately covering more than half of all cars sold nationally. And this standard is far better than the federal fuel efficiency standard that is embodied in the new legislation. First of all, there is no standard regarding emissions and greenhouse gases, and CO2 — there’s only the fuel efficiency standard that’s just been adopted in federal legislation, which is 35 miles to the gallon by 2020. The state emission standards, in effect, translated into fuel efficiency, would be more than 40 miles to the gallon by 2016, and action immediately — as early as 2009 — to begin implementing that standard. So there’s no federal standard on emissions, there’s only fuel efficiency, which is not the same thing, and the fuel efficiency standard adopted in national legislation is way inferior to the effect of these greenhouse gas emission standards that the states would adopt.

Lawsuits notoriously drag on for years. What do you think will happen, say, in the next six months or even the next year?

We’ll be asking the court to expedite this appeal, because lives are at stake, public health and safety, critical issues of law, the future of the planet, not to be too dramatic about it, because greenhouse gas emissions and global warming are the environmental issue of our time. And we have a critical obligation, as well as opportunity, to seize this moment, legally and morally, as well as in public policy, to show the way for the federal government, as well as other states, to adopt a standard that helps cut perhaps the major source of greenhouse gas emissions in the US. Greenhouse gases from cars could be cut by 30 percent by 2016 if these standards are adopted; a 30 percent reduction nationally is an achievable and profoundly significant goal if these standards are adopted, and we’re asking the court to act without delay during this year to vindicate our cause.

I guess the silver lining is the Bush administration is due to leave office a year from now, so you’ll probably get a favorable ruling after that, if not before.

Our hope is that a new administration, Democrat or Republican, will adopt entirely new policies and attitudes toward global warming and a series of other environmental issues relating to nitrogen oxide, sulfur dioxide, power plant pollution. This administration, is literally the most lawless — environmentally lawless — administration in the history of the nation. And we have taken it to court time after time, literally in the Supreme Court of the U.S., winning a case last spring that involved the U.S. Supreme Court telling the administration it must consider CO2 and greenhouse gas emissions as a potential pollutant under the Clean Air Act.

So we have a string of victories against this administration that shows it is lawless and utterly disrespectful of its legal obligations, and we’re hoping the Ninth Circuit, without delay, will direct the administration to follow the law. But on a whole series of issues, a new administration could make a huge difference on environmental enforcement.

This interview originally aired on “Between the Lines,” a weekly half-hour progressive radio newsmagazine produced at WPKN in Bridgeport and heard on 40 stations around the country, as well as online.

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