California Democratic Attorney General Xavier Becerra said Monday he is “ready to file suit” after Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt said he would scrap former President Barack Obama’s strict fuel-efficiency and greenhouse gas rules for cars and light trucks.
“The Trump administration’s assault on clean car standards risks our ability to protect our children’s health, tackle climate change, and save hardworking Americans money,” Becerra said. “My team is currently reviewing the EPA’s determination and working closely with the California Air Resources Board. We’re ready to file suit if needed to protect these critical standards and to fight the administration’s war on our environment. California didn’t become the sixth-largest economy in the world by spectating.”
[EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt kills Obama’s fuel efficiency rules for cars]
Pruitt said the Obama administration’s rules that set a 54-mile per gallon standard by 2025, up from the current average of 38.3 mpg, were “not appropriate” and “too high” in light of recent automobile sales data and should be revised.
The EPA is starting a joint notice and public comment process with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to develop a new rule setting greenhouse gas emission standards for cars and light-duty trucks, such as pickups and sport utility vehicles, for model years 2022-2025.
The EPA, in rejecting Obama’s standards, pointed out that that Monday’s determination isn’t a final action and thus can’t be sued over. It says lawsuits can’t be filed until it concludes its rulemaking, meaning after it sets new standards.
Still, the decision to reject the Obama standards sets up a fight with California and 12 other states that had adopted the tougher rules as a way of reducing man-made greenhouse emissions that many climate scientists say contribute to climate change.
“This is a politically motivated effort to weaken clean vehicle standards with no documentation, evidence or law to back up that decision,” said Mary D. Nichols, the chairwoman of the California Air Resources Board. “This is not a technical assessment, it is a move to demolish the nation’s clean car program. EPA’s action, if implemented, will worsen people’s health with degraded air quality and undermine regulatory certainty for automakers.”
Nichols vowed Monday to continue to apply California’s tougher standards, regardless of the EPA’s move to weaken the national rules.
“This decision takes the U.S. auto industry backward, and we will vigorously defend the existing clean vehicle standards and fight to preserve one national clean vehicle program,” Nichols said. “California will not weaken its nationally accepted clean car standards, and automakers will continue to meet those higher standards, bringing better gas mileage and less pollution for everyone.”
California, which can set its own fuel-efficiency standards that other states may follow, could move to separate its rules from the national program if the EPA weakens the standards. That effectively would create two separate rules for automakers to follow when producing cars for sale in the U.S.
The states that are following California, including New York and Pennsylvania, account for roughly one-third of the nation’s auto market.
California is the nation’s largest market for zero-emission electric vehicles and is aiming to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions by 40 percent by 2030.
Pruitt on Monday said he is still examining whether to allow California to keep its waiver, permitted by the federal Clean Air Act, to force the state to follow weaker standards.
Some conservatives have called on Pruitt to revoke California’s waiver.
Pruitt could revoke California’s waiver to get it to follow whatever new rules he tries to establish, but that has never been done before. The EPA and California Air Resources Board have been meeting to negotiate a way to marry their preferred standards but have not reached a compromise.
“No waiver has ever been revoked, and it’s not clear exactly what the process would be to do that, which poses an entirely different challenge we haven’t seen before,” Dave Cooke, a senior vehicle analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists, told the Washington Examiner.
On Monday, the State Energy and Environment Impact Center, a coalition representing liberal attorneys general, reiterated that multiple states plan to challenge the EPA’s move.
“EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt has picked another senseless, destructive fight by undercutting tailpipe emissions reductions that industry, state and federal governments and the public worked together to put in place,” said David Hayes, the executive director of the coalition. “Pruitt leaves state attorneys general little choice but to fight back — and add to their courthouse victory tally.”
