Air Pollution Control

Say you buy a car that coughs out a lot of greenhouse gases. Should you pay more for the privilege of polluting? And say your neighbor buys a car that spews out far less. Should he be rewarded for helping to save the planet? This week, the California Assembly is expected to vote on the California Clean Car Discount Act, which, if passed, would be the nation's first "feebate" law, imposing charges and granting rebates based on a vehicle's emission of carbon dioxide and other gases.

The chairman of a key congressional committee issued a subpoena Friday to compel the Environmental Protection Agency to turn over documents on its decision to deny California permission to implement its own global warming laws. Escalating the fight over the decision, Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Beverly Hills), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, directed the EPA to provide uncensored copies of its staff recommendation to agency Administrator Stephen L.

Those snazzy HEPA -- high efficiency particulate air -- filters designed for home use may actually do a body good, Danish researchers have found. Just two days of exposure to HEPA filters in the home resulted in a significant, positive effect on a key measure of cardiovascular health among 21 nonsmoking couples ages 60 to 75, says Dr.

For months, officials in Los Angeles and Long Beach have touted plans to jointly combat air pollution generated by their adjacent ports, but a much-vaunted program to replace thousands of polluting trucks has hit a significant snag. The problem reveals that officials at the cities' ports have sharply differing views on how to treat the 16,500 truckers serving the nation's busiest port complex.

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.

When the state Air Resources Board met two weeks ago for an important vote, one member -- Daniel Sperling -- took center stage. At issue was whether the board would revise a mandate requiring automakers to produce 25,000 emission-free vehicles from 2012 through 2014. After hours of public comments, a board member proposed cutting that number to 10,000. Sperling went further, calling for 7,500.

President Bush said Wednesday that the U.S. should halt the rise in its greenhouse gas emissions by 2025, as he sought to set boundaries for global warming initiatives under consideration by Congress and major industrialized nations. But the calendar leaves him little time and, critics said, little prospect of influencing the debate. All of the presidential candidates who want to replace him favor stronger action. To reach his goal, the president said, the U.S.

Fighting global warming is the feel-good cause of the moment. But in California, the self-congratulation that followed the 2006 passage of the nation's first comprehensive law to curb emissions of planet-warming greenhouse gases is fast turning to acrimony. A ferocious behind-the-scenes brawl over how to regulate electricity plants, the biggest source of carbon dioxide after motor vehicles, has pitted Southern California's public power generators against its for-profit utilities. Why?

Mirror, mirror on the wall: Who is the greenest of them all? Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has a plan to slash his city's planet-warming greenhouse gases to 35% below the 1990 level by 2030, and make L.A. the "cleanest and greenest city in the country." San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom has a blueprint to cut his city's greenhouse gases to 20% below the 1990 level by 2012, creating "the greenest large city in the United States of America."

A coalition of environmental groups plans to sue the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency today to force it to overturn motor vehicle emissions limits for Southern California, charging that the targets fail to address hazardous pollution faced by 1.5 million people who live next to freeways. In a petition to be filed in the U.S.