California Air Board Chief Says Auto Emissions Regulations Must Be Tougher
By John O'Dell May 21, 2009CARB Already Working on Greenhouse Gas Emissions Rules for 2017 and Beyond
Whoa. Just when we thought it was safe to close the filing cabinet marked "California Greenhouse Gas Effort" now that the feds are going to adopt the controversial 30 percent reduction of automotive GHG as a national standard, word comes that the Golden State's air regulators aren't going to take even a short break.
Instead, the California Air Resources Board is starting to work "immediately" on "even more stringent standards" to take effect in the state after 2016, CARB's hardworking chairman, Mary Nichols, told a Reuters reporter the other day.
Nichols was instrumental in pushing the feds to use California's proposed statewide regulation of greenhouse gases from auto emissions as the basis for the just-announced federal rule that will increase average passenger vehicle fuel economy by 30 percent, with a corresponding reduction in carbon emissions, by 2016.
The decision by President Obama to seize on California's effort eliminates the need for the federal government to grant the state a special waiver to go it alone - a waiver Nichols' board has been fighting for since 2007.
No Letting Up
But the state air board doesn't see this week's events as victory. "It doesn't signal any kind of flagging interest on the part of California in being part of a transformation of the auto fleet to something much more efficient than what it is today," Nichols told Reuters.
"California is one state with a very strong [auto] market and a history of desire for advanced vehicles," she said, and can "move much more quickly and aggressively than the federal government" to achieve its desires.
Automakers aren't going to be happy with Nichols' vow to keep demanding more - they're just now starting to meet with federal regulators to figure out the rules for achieving the 2016 standards.
She's likely pleased a lot of environmental groups that see the automobile as the embodiment of evil, however.
Diminishing Returns?
As for us, well, we see her comments as a sort of guarantee of long-term employment for those who write about green car issues, and we selfishly welcome that.
But we also wonder whether California isn't approaching the point of no returns in its near-obsessive desire to make auto emissions cleaner than pure spring water.
We're not suggesting that there are no more improvements to be achieved on the automotive front, but we hope Nichols and her board take a hard look at the cost versus the benefit and at whether there might not be other, dirtier targets out there to aim at as well.
Meantime, we welcome efforts to push and prod automakers into building vehicles that are more fuel efficient and less oil dependent than the current crop. We would like to see similar efforts expended, though, on pushing and prodding the populace into demanding those kinds of vehicles.
John O'Dell, Senior Editor
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