California's states'-rights battle against the Bush administration over global warming was freed to move forward in federal court Friday, after the Environmental Protection Agency issued its long-delayed justification for blocking the state's 2002 law curbing greenhouse emissions from cars and trucks.
EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson had written to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in December that he would not grant a waiver of the Clean Air Act, normally a routine action, allowing the state to enact its own curbs on carbon dioxide and other planet-warming gases.
But the federal agency had postponed publishing its written justification in the Federal Register, thus stalling the court case brought by California, 18 other states and seven environmental groups.
The EPA administrator's decision sparked protests from 14 governors, while members of Congress called hearings into why Johnson had overruled EPA staff scientists who recommended he grant the waiver.
Congressional Democrats think the decision was politically motivated and have sought correspondence between the agency and the White House.
"I based my decision to deny California's waiver request on the facts and the law, not on winning a popularity contest," Johnson said in an e-mail Friday.
The 47-page document to be published in the Federal Register focuses on a Clean Air Act clause that motor vehicle waivers be issued to California on the grounds of "compelling and extraordinary" circumstances in the state, which had begun regulating emissions before the 1970 federal law.
Other states were permitted under the Clean Air Act to adopt California's standards if they were stricter than federal rules.
California at the time had the dirtiest air in the nation, and today 90% of Californians still breathe unhealthy air, according to scientists.
That pollution is exacerbated by global warming, California officials argued in requesting a waiver to regulate tailpipe emissions of carbon dioxide.
Greenhouse gases trap heat below the atmosphere, creating rising temperatures that boost ozone and other pollutants, which results in respiratory illnesses, scientists say.
But Johnson wrote: "While I find that the conditions related to global climate change in California are substantial, they are not sufficiently different from conditions in the nation as a whole to justify separate state standards."
