Agreement on the national standards came after intensive negotiations between the administration, California, environmentalists and the auto industry.
In the future, California could petition the EPA to set even stricter emissions standards, which probably would be granted on the legal grounds that the administration reaffirmed in granting this request.
"Congress recognized that California could serve as a pioneer and a laboratory for the nation in setting new motor vehicle emission standards," Jackson wrote in today's decision. "Congress intentionally structured this waiver provision to restrict and limit EPA's ability to deny a waiver, and did this to ensure that California had broad discretion in selecting the means it determined best to protect the health and welfare of its citizens."
The original Clean Air Act, passed in the 1960s, included a provision that allowed California to seek permission to set its own tougher standards. Other states could adopt California's rules or stick with the federal government's.
Spurred by a 2002 state law, California adopted standards for tailpipe emission of greenhouse gases, which scientists blame for climate change. The state petitioned to enforce them under the Clean Air Act, and a dozen other states lined up to adopt them.
But late in 2007, President Bush's EPA denied the request -- the first time in more than 50 instances that the agency had rejected an entire set of proposed California standards.
Stephen L. Johnson, EPA administrator at the time, said California had failed to demonstrate that the standards were necessitated by "compelling and extraordinary conditions" as required by law, because global warming was not an extraordinary threat to the state compared to the country as a whole.
Obama's EPA disagreed. Jackson, the current administrator, said today's decision stemmed from a careful reading of the Clean Air Act and EPA history.
"This decision was based entirely on the law," she said, "and not at all on politics."
Longtime advocates of the waiver cheered Monday night.
State Sen. Fran Pavley (D-Agoura Hills), who wrote California's 2004 emissions law, took a break from state budget negotiations to share a celebratory bottle of non-alcoholic Pinot Noir with colleagues.
"For our state, it's quite a victory," she said, "and for the coalition we had working on this bill back when global warming wasn't the issue of the day."
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jtankersley@latimes.com
