STATE AG'S SEND LETTER TO CONGRESS ON WARMING POLICY

Washington, DC - Yesterday the Attorneys General of fourteen states and the City of New York sent a letter to the leaders of the House Energy and Commerce Committee stating their opposition to a legislative discussion draft they say would undercut the authority of states and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to regulate heat-trapping pollution from vehicles. This comes in advance of the two leaders of these top state legal officials appearing before Chairman Edward Markey (D-MA) and the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming on Friday.

The Attorneys General argue that the discussion draft would amend the Clean Air Act in two negative ways: by eliminating “the authority that the Clean Air Act has provided EPA for decades to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, as the U.S. Supreme Court recently recognized. . .and eliminate EPA's ability to grant a waiver of preemption for California state motor vehicle emission standards for greenhouse gases.”

“Congress cannot cut out the legs from under the states on global warming just as they start to sprint past a sedentary Congress,” said Chairman Markey. “The Supreme Court has recognized the authority to regulate heat-trapping pollution from vehicles, and the science dictates that Congress must take strong action now before it’s too late.”

In 2004 California adopted the nation’s first ever regulation to reduce global warming pollution from cars. It requires emissions of carbon dioxide and other pollutants to be reduced by 22 percent by the 2012 model year and 30 percent by the 2016 model year. A dozen other states and Canada have said they will follow California’s lead, which would comprise over one-third of the North American car market.

Tomorrow Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley and California Attorney General Jerry Brown, the lead signatures on the letter, will appear in the second panel of a hearing before the Select Committee and are expected to uphold their belief in their states’ right to cut emissions. They will be preceded by EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson and NHTSA Administrator Nicole Nason at the hearing.

Johnson and Bush administration officials have indicated they may find ways to avoid cutting global warming emissions, even with Supreme Court authority to do so. Last month the President, at a Rose Garden press conference, instructed his Cabinet agencies to work together to come up with a plan to cut gasoline use and global warming emissions, even though the plan would not be completed until three weeks before he left office.

In statements immediately following that announcement, Johnson backpedaled, saying that even the recent Supreme Court case on his agency’s authority to cut emissions would not necessarily mean they would do so. Johnson cited the dissenting opinion of Justice Antonin Scalia, dismissing the majority opinion from the Court that EPA had the authority to cut emissions.

“The Bush administration is so intent on avoiding global warming action that they even view legal losses as negotiable,” continued Mr. Markey. “I intend to ask Administrator Johnson how he can adhere to this highly tenuous position at my hearing tomorrow.”

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