Congressional critics launched an offensive against the Bush administration Thursday for denying California and other states the right to adopt strict curbs on greenhouse gas emissions from cars and trucks.
Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), chairwoman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said she would consider issuing a subpoena for documents that might show White House interference in the Dec. 19 decision to deny California a waiver to enact its own rules under the Clean Air Act.
"This outrageous decision . . . is completely contrary to the law and science," Boxer said in a briefing with state officials at Los Angeles City Hall. She held up an empty cardboard box as a symbol of the Environmental Protection Agency's refusal so far to provide the hefty technical and legal backup that normally accompanies air pollution waiver decisions and are usually published in the Federal Register.
The EPA's decision was in part based on the assertion that global warming, caused by carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, is a worldwide problem rather than a California issue, and therefore requires a national, rather than a state-led, solution. EPA administrator Stephen L. Johnson said an energy bill signed by President Bush last month would adequately control greenhouse gas emissions by requiring a 35-mph fleet-wide fuel economy average by 2020.
But the air board has calculated that more greenhouse gas would be emitted under the federal plan than under California's blueprint.
California already has the nation's most severe smog and soot. And scientists have found that by warming the air and increasing humidity, carbon dioxide emissions increase concentrations of ozone and fine particulates, which are linked to heart attacks, asthma and other diseases. A Stanford University study released last week calculated that California would have several hundred additional deaths each year due to the effects of global warming.
Using a computer model to simulate global pollution changes and factoring in the health effects confirmed by previous studies, Mark Jacobson, a Stanford professor of civil and environmental engineering, concluded that about 21,600 people worldwide could die each year for each degree Celsius of temperature increase.
"With six of the 10 most polluted cities in the nation being in California," Jacobson said, "that alone creates a special circumstance for the state."
