Regular readers (and new readers who have followed the issue) will recall that the last few months have seen some controversy over personnel changes and the pace of action at the California Air Resources Board (CARB), the state agency charged with developing, by 2010, regulations to ensure the state meets its landmark emissions-reduction targets.
Thus it's significant news that today CARB will be announcing a set of preliminary standards aimed at cutting emissions within the next several years.
The San Francisco Chronicle has additional coverage. Two quick thoughts, after the jump, on how this plays out beyond the standards themselves...
1) While this is a small step forward, regulators do note that scores of thornier issues still must be settled to meet the state's targets, among them auto emissions standards. In other words, the outcomes of automakers' lawsuit against the state, and of the Clean Air Act waiver request being endlessly mulled by the EPA, are all the more critical:
But Nichols noted that critical issues have yet to be resolved, including the massive contribution of California vehicles to global warming emissions. Automobile companies have filed suit against California's 2002 law, which would require them to cut carbon dioxide from tailpipes by 30%. And the federal Environmental Protection Agency has yet to issue a waiver allowing California and other states to regulate vehicular greenhouse gases.
Automobile rules, as well as new restrictions on utilities, must be part of the final plan if the state is to reach its 2020 goals, Nichols said.
2) The message that the state must start working now to meet its goals only strengthens the hand of California's Attorney General, Jerry Brown. Brown has argued that the state can't wait until 2010 to start reducing climate-change impacts, which is one reason he's acting now and filing lawsuits based on the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). But detractors often noted that CARB had yet to even develop the standards he was claiming to support.
Now that CARB has started acting and seconded a message of urgency, claims that Brown's actions are extra-legal and purely political in nature-- whose flawed logic we've already noted-- are only further diminished.
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