EPA puts clean cars in neutral 

Transportation is the largest and fastest growing source of global warming pollution in Rhode Island. To tackle global warming, Rhode Island must find solutions to the transportation problem.  Reducing vehicle miles traveled—now in excess of 20 million miles a day in Rhode Island—and requiring cleaner cars that pollute less than those that are on the road today can do this.

With the latter goal in mind, Rhode Island adopted global warming standards for new cars and trucks in December 2005. The Clean Cars Program would have applied to cars built beginning in January for model year 2009, and it would have achieved a 30 percent reduction in global warming pollution from new cars and trucks by 2016.

However, in December 2007, the administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Stephen Johnson, announced his intention to kill state global warming standards. At the behest of the auto industry he denied the waiver that would allow states to implement the Clean Cars Program.

In backing the auto industry and deciding to try to nullify the Clean Cars Program, Johnson chose to ignore the research of climate scientists and shirk the EPA’s legal duty to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

Action by the states

In the past year, federal judges in California and Vermont, as well as the U.S. Supreme Court, have rejected automakers’ legal challenges to the Clean Cars Program. Another case is pending in U.S. District Court in Providence, where Judge Ernest C.Torres will hopefully come to the same conclusion.

The decision by the EPA will severely hamstring Rhode Island’s ability to take action to reduce global warming pollution. While Rhode Island can and should continue to pursue other transportation strategies, such as expanding commuter rail, hiring enough bus drivers to meet demand, putting enough buses on the road and encouraging smart growth patterns, it is a travesty that the fastest and cheapest option to reduce global warming pollution from the transportation sector has been taken off the table.

Rhode Island—under the leadership of Attorney General Patrick Lynch—has joined 15 other states in supporting a petition filed by California for judicial review of the Clean Cars Program waiver denial by the federal government. Lynch is also defending Rhode Island’s clean-car regulations in federal court before Judge Torres. While this is an encouraging development because it could save the program, it still means a delay in putting cleaner cars on the road while the petition works its way through the courts.

In the mean time, the public will suffer because the federal government has decided to back the auto industry and stand in the way of Rhode Island and other states taking action to address global warming. Environment Rhode Island is backing legislation in Congress to overturn the EPA’s decision.