Air Pollution Control

A Senate bill to cut greenhouse gases and address global warming is heading toward almost certain defeat after nearly a week of stalemate and partisan bickering. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has set a vote for 9 a.m. Pacific today to try to overcome a Republican filibuster. He has pledged to pull the bill if the attempt to cut off debate fails. The measure would require power plants, refineries and factories to reduce their carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases by about 19% by 2020 and by 71% by midcentury.

Money collected in Los Angeles County to clean up its polluted ports would be shared with the Central Valley under a proposal by the Schwarzenegger administration that is drawing opposition from Southern California leaders. Sponsors of legislation that would charge shippers about $60 a container in the ports of Los Angeles, Long Beach and Oakland had intended to use the money in areas close to those cities' ports to reduce traffic congestion and air pollution.

Following weeks of worry about whether they could meet their own deadlines, Los Angeles and Long Beach port officials said Friday that they were closing in on having enough trucking companies lined up to get their clean-air programs off the ground in October. The landmark anti-pollution efforts seek initially to rid the nation's two busiest container ports of the worst polluting trucks, which are at least 20 years old.

A federal court judge Tuesday denied a trucking association's request that she halt key elements of a landmark program designed to help reduce pollution at the Los Angeles-Long Beach ports complex. Granting the request "would not serve the public interest in any significant way," U.S. District Judge Christina Snyder wrote in a 26-page ruling. She said she was not persuaded by the American Trucking Assn.'

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the Republican candidate for vice president, has urged Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to veto a fee on cargo containers going through the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, setting off a wave of criticism from California environmentalists. Palin's letter to Schwarzenegger is dated Aug. 28 -- one day before presidential candidate and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) announced that he had picked her as his running mate.

California chalked up a victory in its long battle against sprawl-induced smog Friday. A federal judge in Fresno upheld an ambitious regulation passed by the San Joaquin Valley Air Pollution Control District in 2005 that requires developers to minimize pollution by building near public transit, adding bicycle lanes or creating shopping areas designed for pedestrians. If they don't, they must pay a fee to fund emission reduction projects elsewhere.

A landmark pollution-control program at the nation's busiest port complex was launched Wednesday with an immediate ban on 2,000 of the region's diesel-spewing big rigs and few reports of backups or unusual delays in the flow of cargo. An estimated 95% of the trucks lining up for the starting 8 a.m.

California forged ahead Wednesday in its bold attempt to turn back the clock of climate change, issuing its final draft of an economywide plan to slash the state's greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels.

The Federal Maritime Commission said Wednesday that it would ask a U.S. District Court to strike down parts of a landmark pollution-control program at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, the nation's busiest international cargo complex. Elements of the ports' clean truck program "are likely, by a reduction in competition, to produce an unreasonable increase in transportation cost or unreasonable reduction in service," the commission said in a statement.

Nike Inc., Starbucks Corp., Levi Strauss & Co. and two other U.S. companies called Wednesday for aggressive policies to limit global warming to help rescue the country from an economic crisis. The coalition appealed for steep cuts in U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions, investment in renewable energy from the wind and sun, and limits on polluting coal-fired power plants. Congress and President-elect Barack Obama should take action on the matter early in 2009, they said.