This was expected, but President Obama is setting in motion a process that would finally allow California to set its own emissions standards.

President Obama will direct federal regulators on Monday to move swiftly on an application by California and 13 other states to set strict automobile emission and fuel efficiency standards, two administration officials said Sunday.

The directive makes good on an Obama campaign pledge and signifies a sharp reversal of Bush administration policy. Granting California and the other states the right to regulate tailpipe emissions would be one of the most emphatic actions Mr. Obama could take to quickly put his stamp on environmental policy.

Mr. Obama’s presidential memorandum will order the Environmental Protection Agency to reconsider the Bush administration’s past rejection of the California application. While it stops short of flatly ordering the Bush decision reversed, the agency’s regulators are now widely expected to do so after completing a formal review process.

Just to pre-empt the whining from the right, the EPA had never before in its history denied California a waiver under the Clean Air Act.  The courts have looked at this from the perspective of the automakers and have ruled repeatedly in favor of California and other states, agreeing that they are well within their rights to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

Not only did the Bush Administration deny California the right to implement their tailpipe emissions law, they slow-walked the fuel efficiency standards passed by the Congress and signed by the then-President in 2007.  President Obama will direct the Transportation Department to finalize those standards as well.

This will be announced in the East Room tomorrow.  We now have a President who understands the need to act swiftly to combat the worst effects of climate change.  California will finally be allowed to lead this effort.

It’s worthwhile every so often to look for the silver lining in the storm clouds over this state.  After all, we do have a new President!  That seems to be working out!  And his pick for EPA Administrator, Lisa Jackson, was confirmed last night.  Which means that it’s probably only a matter of days before California gets its long-sought waiver to regulate tailpipe emissions.

With a new occupant in the White House, California could soon start enforcing its landmark 2002 law requiring a sharp reduction in vehicle emissions.

State leaders and environmentalists are pressing for quick approval of a waiver that would let California and at least 13 other states impose tougher air-quality standards than allowed under federal law. The Bush administration rejected the request a year ago, but that could be reversed by President Barack Obama and his environmental team.

During the presidential campaign, Obama said he backed the California law. Last year, he co-sponsored a bill by Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer of California to approve the waiver.

“If I’m confirmed, I will immediately revisit the waiver,” Lisa Jackson, Obama’s choice to head the Environmental Protection Agency, told Boxer at her confirmation hearing last week.

This would set in motion a program to reduce emissions from vehicles by 30 percent over the next seven years.  It would spur alternative transportation development like SUPERTRAINS out of necessity, and force the production of clean-energy vehicles.  Industry was not going to innovate on their own; they had 30 years to recognize this problem but they sat on their hands.  It’s not a question of whether or not we can afford to implement this; given the natural disasters like wildfires that hit the state with increasing frequency, given the melting of the Sierra snowpack which decreases our access to water resources, given the public health effects of dirty air (a recent report showed that clean air increases lifespans by up to three years), given all the ancillary costs of climte change, we can’t afford not to.

The Governor and state leaders have been lobbying for the waiver since President Obama’s inauguration, and I’m confident that we’ll see granting within the next week.

Congress, worried that the war on Iraq might actually end one day, has turned its attention to funding the war on the environment. This week the House acquiescently passed the auto companies’ bailout — or as we are supposed to call it, “bridge loan” – memories already dimmed of the auto execs’ flying to D.C. in private jets last month. http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/11/… The only reason the auto giants are not getting a check on Monday is that the Republicans in the Senate have since voted against the bill.

But, like the unpleasant memories in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Democrats’ memories seem to have been erased, and we heard nary a peep about all the times the car companies have sued and testified and spent a lot of energy to defeat any government limits on their planetary destruction. California has been especially affected by their litigiousness, as the state has tried to lead the way with progressive standards to curb auto emissions. In fact, the auto companies are in litigation against California right now. State Attorney General Jerry Brown asked Congress to place a very reasonable restriction on the bridge loan: that California and other states be ensured the authority to set auto emissions standards at the California level, which would make the lawsuit against the California government groundless. http://ag.ca.gov/newsalerts/re…

This is not a minor lawsuit that the attorney general’s office doesn’t have to devote many resources to — it’s a monster lawsuit in which 21 car companies have joined forces, and that definitely includes the Big Three who have had their hands out: GM, Ford, and DaimlerChrysler. (And don’t rest too easy on the Prius good vibes; Toyota is part of it, too.) It sure seems that if car companies are going broke  after years of Machiavellian scheming to stave off fuel efficiency — as depicted in the documentary Who Killed the Electric Car? — then the very least their sugar daddy should require is that they don’t waste millions on a lawsuit to avoid having to follow the law. If the bailout is altruistic and intended to help the ‘little people’, then the California government should not be having to spend money to defend the right to enforce its own laws when clinics and schools are hurting for funds and people are losing their homes.

GM is one of the companies claiming to be on the verge of bankruptcy right now, and they figure prominently in Who Killed the Electric Car, as they aggressively remove their own electric cars from the road, hide them, and then physically crush the vehicles for fear that people might actually buy them. After finalizing auto bailout legislation for the Senate on Weds., Senator Chris Dodd (the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs) issued a public statement: “I wish that these companies had not gotten themselves into this situation.” Yes, and we also wish that they had not gotten us and the planet into this situation, Senator. http://banking.senate.gov/publ…  Is that the best you can do? Reward them for it?

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi can never remember that she herself actually is a California representative, under the impression instead that she’s Head Chauffeur at the ranch in Crawford, so maybe it shouldn’t be surprising that she came out in the forefront announcing the need for this particular handout. It wasn’t Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, Bush didn’t have to pre-empt prime time; she was the mouthpiece. Since the White House has threatened to nix the auto bailout if there’s any tough love in it, and Pelosi seems to think the White House is doing us a favor, she decided not to rock the boat. Now that the Republicans in the Senate have refused to fall in line, she’s whining to Politico.com about the Senate vote: “To have just 32 Republicans, you think, ‘Why don’t we write our own bill?'” In short, she’s disappointed that Democrats’ sacrifices weren’t appreciated.

I think we’re all scratching our heads wondering why you didn’t write your own bill, Congresswoman, instead of passing a bill for the White House’s tastes. This is the White House which, amidst so many other offences it’s almost impossible to keep track, directed the EPA to oppose California’s emissions law in the first place. Because California was proposing tougher restrictions than the feds, the state needed a waiver to bypass the federal law, and the EPA refused, even though 17 other states wanted to follow the same standards. The Bush White House’s environmental policy, in short, is to actively violate states’ rights in order to aid the oil and auto companies in their quest to pollute. (One would think the purpose of the waiver requirement was to grant some allowances to states having trouble meeting strict environmental standards, not to stop them from protecting the environment.) Bush’s EPA has strenuously fought to do everything possible to enhance global warming, even against a Supreme Court ruling that put the P back in EPA. With all of this back and forth motored, if you will, by the auto companies, you would think Pelosi would be concerned, especially since fellow Northern Californian Barbara Boxer, Chair of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, publicly demanded that EPA head Stephen Johnson resign back in July, and also requested U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey begin a Dept. of Justice perjury investigation against him. http://epw.senate.gov/public/i…

Instead, Pelosi’s complaint to Politico about the Republicans’ obstruction of the auto bailout bill highlighted how she tried to accommodate the White House. It’s Dec. 12, 2008, and she’s still under the impression that bending over backwards for the least popular president anyone can recall is a virtue! Will somebody please tell her there’s a Democratic majority in both houses? About to be replaced after the holidays by an even larger Democratic majority in both houses? Oh yes, and I think the new president is a Democrat, too?

But it gets better. The other anti-environment White House proviso to which Pelosi buckled under is that the auto company rescue be paid for from a fund to build greener cars.

I’m not kidding.

Not only was Pelosi fine with giving money to an industry that considers one of its business expenses a protracted lawsuit against California taxpayers, but she is actually letting the White House plead poverty now (though they never did when demanding that Congress fund the war, reward reckless Wall Street operatives, or cut rich people’s taxes). But now all of a sudden it’s necessary to raid the fund set aside to produce cars that are more environmentally friendly. Granted, Pelosi initially “resisted using” the green fund, ABC News reports,

http://abclocal.go.com/wls/sto…

and I’m sure she’ll be the first to mention that when asked about it (unless she’s able to avoid answering the question.) https://calitics.com/showDi…

However, afraid that she wouldn’t get the job as Silverware Burnisher at Bush’s new home in “whites-only” Dallas suburb Preston Hollow, she “changed her mind under White House pressure.” http://cbs11tv.com/local/bush….

Not to criticize ABC News (not about this story, anyway), but they could have just borrowed their reporting from any report filed about Congress during the last two years: Isn’t “Pelosi resisted but changed her mind under White House pressure” always the theme? I think we could add a word to the dictionary: PELOSI, v.: “to initially resist and then change one’s mind under White House pressure.” We could install a Commemorative Barometer at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and name it “the Pelosi”, so its reading can change with White House pressure in perpetuity. In years to come, any political history scholar who is able to find a single instance during the Bush Administration when Pelosi did not “change her mind under White House pressure” will automatically become famous.

By contrast, Jerry Brown showed what bold, creative leadership actually looks like shortly after being elected state attorney general by launching a lawsuit against the car companies for contributing to global warming. A judge dismissed the suit, but you don’t have to win every struggle to make the attempt worthwhile. The pro-war crowd certainly believes in the nobility of fighting to the finish on the battlefield. (The Democratic ‘leaders’ in Congress, whose arguments against the Iraq War were based on what they thought would make the smoothest sound bites, argued only that we were losing, not that the war is immoral or illegal, thus allowing the ‘fighting against the odds’ mentality to perpetuate the war.) And now the Republicans in the Senate have just shown an astonishing ability to make a stand — only 10 of them voting for the auto bailout – even against their own President.

It seems as if, were it not for the Republicans, the next thing we’ll see is Big Tobacco asking for a handout, complaining that the cost of damaging public health has really put a crimp in their style.

*

If you don’t want to leave the environment up to another Republican filibuster, I suggest contacting your representatives and telling them the lawsuit against California law and the use of the green cars fund are deal-breakers.

www.house.gov

www.senate.gov

Among the many executive orders that Barack Obama will seek to overturn to rack up some quick victories at the beginning of his term, none may have a more lasting impact than granting the waiver to California to regulate their tailpipe emissions.

The president-elect has said, for example, that he intends to quickly reverse the Bush administration’s decision last December to deny California the authority to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from automobiles. “Effectively tackling global warming demands bold and innovative solutions, and given the failure of this administration to act, California should be allowed to pioneer,” Obama said in January.

California had sought permission from the Environmental Protection Agency to require that greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles be cut by 30 percent between 2009 and 2016, effectively mandating that cars achieve a fuel economy standard of at least 36 miles per gallon within eight years. Seventeen other states had promised to adopt California’s rules, representing in total 45 percent of the nation’s automobile market. Environmentalists cheered the California initiative because it would stoke innovation that would potentially benefit the entire country.

“An early move by the Obama administration to sign the California waiver would signal the seriousness of intent to reduce the nation’s dependence on foreign oil and build a future for the domestic auto market,” said Kevin Knobloch, president of the Union of Concerned Scientists.

There are two reasons this is a major change.  One, by granting that carbon dioxide emissions threaten human welfare, you open up a whole toolkit of innovative policy choices to follow to restrict them.  Cap and trade or a carbon tax becomes not just a policy option but a madate under the EPA.  The second, as noted in the article, is that dozens of states will seek to follow the California ruling on tailpipe emissions over the federal government.  And once you have 45% of the market mandating a higher fuel efficiency standard, it is unlikely that automakers will create a secondary market at the lower standard.  You will have raised the CAFE number by default.

All of this is a recognition that the dangers of global warming is real, and that an Obama Administration will not stand in the way of sound science that declares the danger and seeks to mitigate it.  For all of the effort by polluters to save John Dingell’s chairmanship from the clutches of Henry Waxman (and they’re enlisting all the legislators they’ve bought off to that end), this executive order would have lots of reach regardless who controls global warming legislation in the Congress.  It would mean that California can control its own destiny and regulate its own air.  It will force innovation and create economic opportunity and improve public health and possibly save lives.

And it’s all a stroke of the pen away.

A few nuggets for you:

• A Superior Court judge in Alameda County has ruled that cell phone companies cannot charge early-termination fees, and has ordered that Sprint return $18.2 million dollars to consumers.  This will probably get fought on appeal, but right on.  The concept of fee for service has worked pretty well for most of consumer capitalism, as has being nice to your customers instead of bullying them into compliance.

• There’s been a lot of outrage at the LA City Council’s ruling banning new fast-food restaurants from breaking ground in South LA for a year.  Actually, far from being an issue of infringing on freedom, it’s a little thing called land use, and every city has them – even the one that the outraged Will Saletan lives in.  

I’m pretty skeptical that these proposed South LA regulations will do any good. But it’s not unique or unusual for land use regulations to exist. And working class people around the country suffer dramatically larger concrete harms from the sort of commonplace suburbanist regulations that Saletan’s been living with, without apparent complaint, in Chevy Chase. Those kind of regulations are bad for the environment, bad for public health, and serve to use the power of the state to redistribute upwards. So if you’re going to rail against land use regulations, maybe pick the ones that really hurt people.

• In environmental news, Senate leaders like Barbara Boxer are calling for the resignation of EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson for his preferring ideology over science, defying the advice of his own staff, evading oversight and misleading Congress, particularly about refusing the California waiver to regulate tailpipe emissions.  They’re also asking the Attorney General to investigate whether Johnson perjured himself at one of the California waiver hearings in Congress.  In addition, Jerry Brown is suing the EPA for their refusal to regulate greenhouse gas emissions at the nation’s ports.

• And this is pretty interesting, turns out the Sarah of “Sarah’s Law” (parental notification) doesn’t have the squeaky-clean image her sponsors claim:

Backers of a ballot measure that would require parents to be notified before an abortion is performed on a minor acknowledged Friday that the 15-year-old on which “Sarah’s Law” is based had a child and was in a common-law marriage before she died of complications from an abortion in 1994 […]

A lawsuit co-sponsored by Planned Parenthood Affiliates and filed Friday in Sacramento County Superior Court asks the Secretary of State to remove the girl’s story and other information it deemed misleading, including any reference to “Sarah’s Law,” from the material submitted for the official voter guide.

“If you can’t believe the Sarah story, there’s a lot in the ballot argument you can’t believe,” said Ana Sandoval, a spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood and the campaign against Proposition 4.

Using someone’s life story for political means, and wrongly at that.  Good people.

Ok, your turn.

• Do read Robert in Monterey’s report about Abel Maldonado, Don Perata’s best buddy, running as a write-in candidate in the Democratic primary to stall an attempt to get an opponent on the November ballot.  First of all, this is an example of why crossfiling should be banned once and for all.  Second, Abel Maldonado is a snake and I can now see why Don Perata would knock on doors for him.  Apparently, neither of them have much interest in the democratic process.

• Arnold thinks the legalization of gender-neutral marriage will be a boost to the sluggish economy, but I hope he’s not basing his entire budget on a sharp uptick in gay weddings.  I mean, there are only so many Mr. Sulus rich enough to have that surge register more than a blip.  By the way, good for Mr. Sulu.  And good for Ellen DeGeneres for telling Straight Talk Express where to shove it.

• Speaking of John W. McCain, he’s in California today.  Nobody show him the PPIC numbers!

• Lucas mentioned this, but Darrell Issa got in the middle of a heated exchange between Henry Waxman and EPA Adminstrator Stephen Johnson over the EPA’s breaking the Clean Air Act.  Emptywheel has video:

• Why Fabian Nuñez is claiming racial bias at this late date over questions about his travel practices is completely beyond me.  And he’s taken to Spanish-language television for these accusations to stoke divisiveness in the Latino community, too.  It’s so counterproductive, as well as misleading.

• Speaking of Spanish-speaking media, this is an older story, but it’s fascinating to me that the Spanish-language channels in LA are so much more substantive than the English-language ones, featuring longer, “more deeply reported” pieces.

• We could see a settlement very shortly on prison overcrowding in the state which would not require early release.  There are some decent components to this deal, but it basically gives everyone three more years to clean up their act, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it just puts us in the same siutation come 2011.  The policies needed are well-known; the political will remains elusive.

• The Bay Area AQMD passed a carbon tax for businesses that emit greenhouse gases.  It’s “not enough to change behavior,” one expert said, but it does presage what may be coming down the pike for polluters.  Whether you get there through selling carbon permits at auction or with a tax, the bottom line is that pollution is going to cost enough money to alter business’ approach to engaging in it.  This is a good step.

• Interesting that we denied the endorsement to Rep. Laura Richardson (CA-37) on the same day that she is forced to defend herself against allegations that she walked away from her foreclosed home in Sacramento.  It sounds like the Congresswoman renegotiated the loan, but the conservative fever swamps are all over this one (check the comments in that LAT blog post).  She did buy the half-million-dollar home with no money down, and then left Sacramento almost immediately after winning election to fill the open seat in Congress.

The Bush Administration’s Department of Transportation proposal to raise fuel economy rates faster than Congress mandated last fall comes with a catch – obliterating California’s proposal to regulate tailpipe emissions.  Think Progress has the relevant passage in the report.

(b) As a state regulation related to fuel economy standards, any state regulation regulating tailpipe

carbon dioxide emissions from automobiles is expressly preempted under 49 U.S.C. 32919.

(c) A state regulation regulating tailpipe carbon dioxide emissions from automobiles, particularly a regulation that is not attribute-based and does not separately regulate passenger cars and light trucks, conflicts with:

1. The fuel economy standards in this Part

2. The judgments made by the agency in establishing those standards, and

3. The achievement of the objectives of the statute (49 U.S.C. Chapter 329)

This actually changes little in the near term.  The EPA has already denied California a waiver to regulate their own emissions, a ruling that is under court appeal.  And the Supreme Court has already ruled on the belief that gas mileage standards and greenhouse gas emissions are separate, and that the states may act to regulate the latter.

Arnold Schwarzenegger and a coalition of governors have acted swiftly:

NHTSA has no authority to preempt states from regulating greenhouse gases.  Congress and two federal district courts have rejected NHTSA’s claim to such authority.  Furthermore, this attack completely undermines the cooperative federalism principles embodied in the Clean Air Act, and is an end run around 40 years of precedent under that law.

Our states intend to comment on the proposed rulemaking and, if necessary, will sue NHTSA, just as California and other states have sued the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, to ensure that states retain the right to reduce global climate change emissions…

It just adds to the extreme hackitude that has characterized this Administration’s actions on global warming.  We learned this week that over half of all EPA scientists have “experienced incidents of political interference in their work.”  Now the Department of Transportation gets added to the list.