California Sues Bush EPA to Comply With Year Old Supreme Court Ruling on Regulating Greenhouse Gases

“It has been a full year since the Supreme Court declared that greenhouse gases are pollutants which should be regulated by the federal government, but the U.S. EPA has refused to grant California’s waiver that would allow us and 19 other states to improve our quality of life by setting tougher vehicle emissions levels.

“The authority of states to address greenhouse gas emissions from motor vehicles has been clearly and unequivocally supported – by the Supreme Court, a federal court decision in Vermont and in December by a federal court here in California. On this issue, the U.S. EPA has failed to lead, it has failed to follow the states’ lead and we are prepared to force it out of the way in order to protect the environment.”

EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson said repeatedly, under oath, that he would comply with the Court's mandate and issue a determination of endangerment by the end of 2007. Last week, Johnson broke that promise by extending the time period another twelve months until President Bush leaves office.

In February, Brown and seventeen other states asked the EPA why it was delaying in issuing its report. In response, Administrator Johnson backtracked on his earlier promise, stating "the Agency does not have a specific timeline for responding to the remand." The EPA tried to explain its abrupt change of course by pointing to the recent enactment of the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, a law which does not change EPA's duties under the Supreme Court's decision.

Under Johnson, the EPA has also failed to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from aircraft, ocean-going vessels and non-road vehicles and engines. Brown sued the EPA in January after the agency broke forty years of precedent by rejecting California's petition to regulate tailpipe greenhouse gases.

Since the beginning of the industrial era, atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide have reached their highest point in the last half-million years. Rajendra Pachauri, a scientist who heads the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recently said "If there's no action before 2012, that's too late. What we do in the next two to three years will determine our future. This is the defining moment."

National and international environmental groups also joining include: Center for Biological Diversity, Center for Food Safety, Conservation Law Foundation, Environmental Advocates, Environmental Defense Fund, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, International Center for Technological Assessment, Natural Resources Defense Council, Sierra Club, and U.S. Public Interest Research Group

All of these parties were either petitioners in Massachusetts v. EPA, or joined amicus briefs in support.

There are actions on other fronts as well coming from California’s Democrats. Senator Feinstein has introduced a bill with Republican Senator Snowe of Maine that would require the EPA to comply within 60 days and publish its findings and also to consider this in reconsidering its denial of California’s request for a waiver so it, and 17 other states that have joined in, can adopt stringent tailpipe emissions. Senator Boxer and House Representative Waxman have held hearings and subpoenaed EPA records.

James Mikey of the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office—who argued the earlier Supreme Court case summed it up as follows: “One year ago today, the court rejected E.P.A.’s claim that it lacks authority under existing law to regulate greenhouse gases. It has the duty to regulate, not just the authority. E.P.A. has squandered almost a decade and now wants to go back, not to Square 1 but rather to Square 0.”