EPA chief grilled over California rejection
Stephen L. Johnson tells an irate congressional panel that he wasn't pressured into denying the state's bid to curb emissions.
WASHINGTON -- Under grilling from a hostile congressional committee today, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Stephen L. Johnson denied that he was swayed by political pressure in refusing California permission to implement its own global-warming law, as a fight to overturn his decision in the courts and in Congress escalates.
"I was not directed by anyone," Johnson said at the testy hearing chaired by perhaps his fiercest critic, California Sen. Barbara Boxer. "This was solely my decision based upon the law, based upon the facts."
It was Johnson's first appearance on Capitol Hill since he acted last month, and he drew the ire of not only Boxer, his usual critic, but other Democratic senators whose states want to follow California's lead in enacting tougher standards than the federal government for greenhouse gas emissions from new cars and trucks.
"Your agency's decision to deny California a waiver just defies logic to me," Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) told Johnson. "And it's clearly a decision, I believe, that's based on politics and not on fact." Other committee Democrats assailed the decision as "irresponsible" and "unconscionable."
Boxer accused Johnson of going against the advice of his legal and science advisors, siding instead with the auto industry, which has opposed California enacting tougher tailpipe standards than the federal government.
Sen. James M. Inhofe of Oklahoma, Johnson's only Senate defender at the hearing and the only Republican in attendance -- and a leading skeptic of man-made global warming -- dismissed the proceedings as "theater."
The hearing was intended to help build support for a legislative effort to overturn Johnson's decision. Boxer expects to introduce such legislation soon with the support of a number of lawmakers from states that want to implement California's standards. But critics of the EPA decision may stand a better chance in the courts than in Congress. Legislation to overturn the decision is likely to face resistance from not only the White House but Democratic and Republican lawmakers from auto-making states, and maybe even from some GOP members of California's own congressional delegation.
In denying California permission to enact its own emissions standards, Johnson has said that a nationwide approach is preferable to a "patchwork of state rule" for dealing with climate change, a problem that extends beyond state borders, and that the tougher vehicle-fuel economy rules in a recently enacted federal energy bill would go a long way to reducing emissions throughout the United States.
