From Environment America:
“Absurd.” 1… “Disgraceful.” 2… “A mockery of law and sound public policy.” 3
That’s what governors, attorneys general and members of Congress have had to say about the Bush administration’s decision to stop California and 17 other states from adopting global warming pollution-slashing Clean Cars programs.Even though cars and trucks are one of the largest and fastest-growing sources of global warming pollution…Even though the EPA has granted California permission to go beyond federal standards on 50 previous occasions…Even though California’s program would begin a decade earlier and eliminate three times as much carbon pollution as the new federal mileage standards by 2020.
You can register your protest with the EPA here. The decision, frankly, stinks, especially coming just hours after the president signed new auto fuel efficiency standards into law. Observers already are speculating that the fix was in for the auto industry. We’re ready to push for whatever action it takes — including a congressional investigation, legal action and more — to overturn this wrong-headed decision. But step one is registering our outrage with the Bush administration’s EPA and Stephen Johnson, the president’s hand-picked administrator.
Coming just a week after the meeting on climate change in Bali and Al Gore’s acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize, this latest decision is more evidence, as if we needed it, of the Bush administration’s head-in-the-sand approach to global warming. Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised by it, but we don’t have to stand for it.
