September 19, 2007

A t last, we have some good news on the global warming front.

Thanks to a judge in Vermont, states can continue to take the lead in regulating automakers and their emissions.

U.S. District Judge William Sessions III said in his Sept. 12 ruling that Vermont — following the lead of California — has the right to set its own standards on greenhouse gases, even if those standards are tougher than the federal government’s.

Sessions firmly rejected auto industry arguments that such state-level regulations would usurp federal authority and that complying with potentially different state standards would not be feasible.

The decision is not only a victory for Vermont and other states, but for an environmental movement that has been stymied at the national level by a White House ideologically opposed to regulation and hidebound about the science of global warming.

The Bush administration has spent the past six-plus years rewriting environmental rules to benefit industry, weakening some regulations and
ignoring others.

The result has been stagnation at the federal level and a worsening of air quality.

That's why California, Vermont and others have stepped into the fray.

California acted first, passing rules in 2002 that require a 30 percent cut in the emission of carbon dioxide gas from cars and light trucks by 2016. Then last year, it adopted tough new fuel-efficiency standards.

As California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, said earlier this year, the state had to step in "to fill a void created by the inaction of the administration of President Bush."

Other states are also filling that void, the Christian Science Monitor pointed out last week. Ten states in addition to California and Vermont — Connecticut, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Washington — already have adopted the California standard limiting the amount of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that can be emitted from automobile tailpipes. Another six — Arizona, Florida, Illinois, Minnesota, New Mexico and Utah — are waiting for the federal Environmental Protection Agency to approve the California waiver.

This state-by-state approach has the potential to generate the momentum necessary to create a single standard that the auto industry says it would prefer, but has worked tirelessly to defeat over the years.

This is the same approach, notes the Monitor, that resulted in seat belts and air bags being required in vehicles and that led to imposition of mileage standards in the first place.

Judge Sessions did us all a favor by blessing this approach.

Hank Kalet is managing editor of the South Brunswick Post and The Cranbury Press in central New Jersey and a columnist for The Progressive Populist. His blog, Channel Surfing, can be found at www.kaletblog.com. He can be reached at pmproj@progressive.org.