California's EPA waiver

Fran Pavley was one week into her term in the California Assembly in 2001 when she took up the cause of two environmental organizations -- the Bluewater Network and the Sierra Club -- and pioneered a landmark law to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases from the tailpipes of cars and trucks. Within 18 months, the bill had cleared the Legislature; in 2002, it was signed into law by the governor. Environmental leaders applauded the state for making the first national foray into regulating pollutants that cause climate change; state regulators swiftly drew up the rules to meet the law's requirements.

And then, for seven years, the Bush administration dragged its feet, ultimately denying California the right to enforce Pavley's law.

With President Obama's announcement Monday that the Environmental Protection Agency will reconsider that decision, Pavley's long battle to implement the law she wrote may finally be over. And that's a good thing, not just for California but for the country.

California, with its peculiar geography and heavy reliance on motor vehicles, has always led the nation in cleaning up the air. In 1967, California passed the Mulford-Carrell Act, establishing a state agency to monitor air quality and regulate motor vehicle emissions. Three years later, President Nixon -- a Californian -- created the EPA. And it was the California Air Resources Board's "technology-forcing regulation" in 1970 that inspired a miraculous invention called the catalytic converter, which turns carbon monoxide and smog-forming nitrogen oxides into harmless gases. Once automakers began installing them to meet California's emissions requirements, they became standard across the country.

California has not been the only innovating state on environmental law -- New Jersey was the first to force airlines to reduce emissions from jet engines; Minnesota in the early 1970s required its sole nuclear power plant to release far less radioactivity than federal law allowed. But no state rivals California when it comes to fighting smog. In a series of famous hearings on air pollution led by Sen. Edmund Muskie in 1970, nearly every speaker invoked California's example, often with passion. "The Congress of the United States must untie our hands!" demanded Herbert Fineman, the speaker of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, and "authorize [the federal government] to issue motor-vehicle emission standards that are as stringent as the state of California's."