So much for states' rights

by: Jay Stevens

Wed Dec 26, 2007 at 13:36:57 PM MST

...I would like to highlight the efforts being made by State and local governments in the United States to address climate change. Geographically, the United States encompasses vast and diverse climatic zones representative of all major regions of the world -- polar, temperate, semi-tropical, and tropical -- with different heating, cooling, and transportation needs and with different energy endowments. Such diversity allows our State and local governments to act as laboratories where new and creative ideas and methods can be applied and shared with others and inform federal policy -- a truly bottom-up approach to addressing global climate change.

The Guardian, December 24, 2007:

The US vice-president, Dick Cheney, was behind a controversial decision to block California's attempt to impose tough emission limits on car manufacturers, according to insiders at the government Environmental Protection Agency.

Staff at the agency, which announced last week that California's proposed limits were redundant, said the agency's chief went against their expert advice after car executives met Cheney, and a Chrysler executive delivered a letter to the EPA saying why the state should not be allowed to regulate greenhouse gases.

Grist's David Roberts:

Bush and his allies in Congress have steadfastly rejected the "new and creative ideas and methods" implemented at the state level. They fought efforts to get a mandatory nationwide GHG inventory in the energy bill; they still have no comprehensive plan to address climate change; they moved heaven and earth to keep a Renewable Portfolio Standard out of the energy bill; and they have set no goals for reducing emissions.

Today, as the coup de grace, the Bush EPA denied California -- our greatest national "laboratory" for climate policy -- the right to implement its own emission reduction policy. In doing so, EPA chief Stephen Johnson explicitly rejected diversity, calling the move from one fuel economy standard to two a "confusing patchwork" that would befuddle the poor automakers.

When it was a good excuse for the lack of federal action, the Bush administration lauded state initiative. But when it actually threatened one of their corporate contributors, they shut it down. Such is the Republican commitment to federalism.