24 The Nation. March 30, 2020
CALIFORNIA AIR RESOURCES BOARDtion (NHTSA). The outcome of this political and legal
dispute could have decades-long, global ramifications
for efforts to cut carbon dioxide emissions and tackle the
growing threat of climate change.
“We’re not trying to poke anyone’s eye,” Be cer ra says,
“but for us it’s not an option to do otherwise. We’re go-
ing to sever ourselves from that anchor they [the Trump
administration] are trying to throw over the boat. We’re
not interested in sinking.”
The Environmental Protection Agency declined to
comment for this article. In fact, Trump political ap-
pointee Michael Abboud, who was given an oversight
role at the agency after working as a Republican National
Committee research analyst and then as the communi-
cations coordinator for Trump’s presidential campaign,
sent an internal e-mail to career spokespeople for the
EPA who had asked which office should respond to my
request for comment. Abboud told them to “just hold on
this please.”
Why the Trump administration doesn’t like this waiv-
er is pretty straightforward: Among other things, it views
California’s emissions standards as a back door to setting
higher miles-per-gallon requirements for vehicles—and
under the Energy Policy and Conservation Act of 1975,
states aren’t allowed to set their own fuel efficiency stan-
dards. The Obama administration was happy to work
with California on this issue, since the federal EPA and
its state counterpart were committed to tackling climate
change. Under Trump, who seems to view efforts to limit
greenhouse gas emissions as an unnecessary impediment
to economic growth, conflict was inevitable.
The moment Trump was elected, California’s waiver
became vulnerable to an ideologically driven attack on
three fronts. First, in the face of conservative opposition,
California detailed its own greenhouse gas reduction
targets for vehicles in 2002, when AB 1493 created what
were called the Pavley standards. “It rocked the world,”
recalls CARB spokesman Stanley Young. “The automo-
bile industry fought us tooth and nail, said we couldn’t do
it and that greenhouses gases weren’t a pollutant.” Two
years later, CARB locked into place stringent emissions
standards, and other states followed suit. As UCLA en-
vironmental law professor Ann Carlson explains, in 2007
this led to a landmark Supreme Court ruling, Massachu-
setts v. EPA, which established the principle that states
have the right to regulate greenhouse gases, even if they
can’t set their own fuel efficiency requirements.
After the ruling, the George W. Bush administration
made noises about reining in California’s waivers but
didn’t effectively move on it before the 2008 election.
And for the next eight years, the Obama administration
used the waivers’ existence as a tool to reshape federal
regulations in a more environmentally friendly direction.
Then came 2016, and everything changed once again.
The Trump administration came into power commit-
ted to rolling back regulations that in any way limited the
ability to maximize profits for American corporations. It
was, therefore, particularly receptive to lobbying from
the auto industry and fossil fuel companies. On Novem-
ber 10, two days after the election, Mitch Bainwol, then
president and CEO of the lobby group Auto Alliance,
e-mailed Trump’s transition team, urging his incoming
administration to roll back the higher fuel economy
and emissions standards that were negotiated in 2012
between the Obama administration and CARB. Those
standards require vehicle fleets to hit an average fuel ef-
ficiency standard of 54.5 miles per gallon by the middle
of this decade.
“The combination of low gas prices and the existing
fuel efficiency gains from the early years of the program
is undercutting consumer willingness to buy the vehicles
with more expensive alternative powertrains that are nec-
essary for the sector to comply with the more stringent
standards,” Bainwol wrote. He asked Trump’s team to re-
view the waiver revocation process, to create one national
standard with lower fuel efficiency requirements, and to
end California’s ability to force car companies to sell more
zero emission vehicles (ZEVs) over the coming years—a
market lever that increased the number of models on the
market from two in 2012 to more than 40 by last year.
Second, the administration made it clear from the out-
set that any policy initiatives, environmental and otherwise,
developed during the Obama years were in its crosshairs.
Trump wanted to erase Obama’s legacy in its entirety. So
the Trumpists decided that the higher fuel efficiency and
emissions standards negotiated in 2012 must go.
The administration tried to use a midterm EPA
evaluation to conclude that the efficiency goals were
unrealistic and would impose undue economic hardship.
California sued to stop the EPA’s new determination in
May 2018, arguing that the state’s technical analyses,
carried out in conjunction with the Obama administra-
tion, demonstrated that the targets were entirely feasible.
Last September a Washington, DC, judge kicked the can
down the road, ruling that since Trump’s EPA hadn’t yet
come up with standards to replace the Obama-era ones,
any litigation was premature. (Not surprisingly, EPA sci-
entists have been unable to square the circle of lowering
emissions standards while fulfilling their legal duty to
reduce pollution.)
Last year four major automakers agreed to abide by
California’s standards when designing their cars over the
coming years, further infuriating the Trump administra-
tion. In response, the Justice Department launched anThe Trump
administra-
tion came
into power
committed to
rolling back
regulations
that in any
way limited
the ability of
corporations
to maximize
profits.When clean air was
bipartisan: California
Governor Ronald
Reagan signs the act
that led to the creation
of the California Air
Resources Board,
August 1967.