courant.com | Congress' Bill Has Bad Energy
June 12, 2007
While the Republican-led Congress and the Bush administration stalled and dawdled for years, California, Connecticut and 10 other states forged ahead, adopting laws that would cut greenhouse gas emissions by 25 percent from cars and 18 percent from sport utility vehicles beginning in 2009.
A lot has changed since fall. Scientists around the world are agreed that human activity is speeding up global warming. Congress now has a Democratic majority. This spring, the Supreme Court told the Environmental Protection Agency to start regulating carbon dioxide, the chief cause of global warming.
Conditions seem ripe for a new course on energy, and California has officially asked the EPA for a waiver to implement its tougher-than-federal standards for tailpipe emissions.
But the EPA is still stalling. Worse, Democratic Congressman Rick Boucher of Virginia (with the support of Michigan Democrat John Dingell) is proposing a bill that would prohibit the EPA from issuing any waiver "designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions." This would undercut state efforts to reduce tailpipe emissions. ...
