13 September 2007Felicity Barringer
A federal judge in Vermont gave the first legal endorsement today to laws in California and 14 other states that aim to reduce greenhouse gases emitted by automobiles and light trucks.
The judge, William K. Sessions, rejected a variety of challenges to the laws from auto manufacturers, including their contention that the states were usurping federal authority.
The ruling follows a decision by the United States Supreme Court in April that the Environmental Protection Agency has the authority to regulate greenhouse gases as air pollutants. The ruling in Vermont explicitly endorses the idea that California has the right to set its own greenhouse-gas regulations, and other states, like Vermont, have the right to follow California’s lead.
Judge Sessions ruled that the auto manufacturers had not proved their claims that compliance with the law in Vermont — a clone of the groundbreaking statute passed in California — was not feasible.
“Nor,” Judge Sessions wrote, “have they demonstrated that it will limit consumer choice, create economic hardship for the automobile industry, cause significant job loss, or undermine safety.”
Writing in a 240-page decision, the judge also rejected a claim that the Vermont law would intrude into the sphere of foreign policy, which is the unique province of the federal government.
Though the ruling did not deal directly with the California law, it is expected to embolden efforts in California — a state with a three-decade history of subduing polluting industries and serving as a template for other states— to further reduce the emissions that contribute to climate change.
In 2002, California adopted the first state law requiring auto manufacturers to begin cutting carbon dioxide emissions and other greenhouse gases. Vermont adopted the same law, as did 12 other states, including New York.
The auto manufacturers sued to block the laws in Vermont and California. The Vermont lawsuit led to a trial in May and Judge Sessions’s ruling today; the California case is pending.
The federal Clean Air Act gives California the unique authority to set its own emissions standards and allows other states to adopt California’s rules instead of the federal rules. But the California standards require a waiver from the Environmental Protection Agency.
A request for a waiver in the case of the emissions law was made in December, 2005, and the E.P.A. administrator has said he would make a decision by the end of this year. None of the state laws will take effect unless a waiver is granted.
David Doniger, a lawyer with the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental advocacy group that supports the state laws, predicted that Judge Sessions’s ruling will “put a lot more pressure on E.P.A. to grant the waiver.”
In a statement posted on the Web site of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, which brought the lawsuit, Dave McCurdy, the group’s president, said an appeal was being considered.
Mr. McCurdy also said, “The alliance remains committed to working with policymakers to make certain that the E.P.A.’s judgment is based on credible, sound scientific data as to what policies truly impact California, its citizens and global climate concerns.”
Among other things, today’s opinion includes a lengthy analysis of why the federal Transportation Department’s authority over fuel-economy standards does not prevent states from adopting California’s controls over vehicle emissions.
One central reason, Judge Sessions said, is that the California law covers more than just fuel economy. It deals with carbon-dioxide emissions, which are closely correlated with fuel economy, as well as other greenhouse gases, including those in automobile air-conditioning units, which are not tied to fuel economy.
“The district court’s opinion is a sweeping rejection of the auto industry’s claim that California and other states” lack authority to regulate heat-trapping gases, said Richard J. Lazarus, a law professor at Georgetown University, in an e-mail message.
He added that a ruling by the Supreme Court in April that the Environmental Protection Agency has authority to regulate such emissions “plainly emboldened” Judge Sessions, who “takes the further step of endorsing an actual exercise of such authority by the states.”
But Patrick Parenteau, a professor at Vermont Law School, noted that the decision may have jumped the gun, legally speaking, because the Vermont law, pending the E.P.A. ruling on a waiver, has not yet taken effect.
An appeals court could rule that Judge Sessions was premature in deciding the case — in legal parlance, that it was not ripe — even though the auto industry argued for trying the case as if the laws were in effect.
But, while the question of ripeness could upend the Vermont case, the decision gives psychological momentum to the states aligned with California, which also include New Jersey, Connecticut, Arizona, Maryland, Oregon, Washington, Massachusetts, Maine and Pennsylvania.
Under the California law, the emissions reductions for cars in the 2016 model year could be as much as 30 percent or more below current levels.
California regulators have required that by 2012 emissions from cars and light trucks be reduced by 25 percent from 2005 levels. For larger trucks and sport utility vehicles, 18 percent cuts were required.
Experts from the auto industry testified in the Vermont case that, because of the engineering and economic difficulties associated with meeting these goals, few if any of their cars and trucks would be sold in Vermont by 2016.
Judge Sessions noted many of the emerging technologies for reducing gas consumption and questioned the automakers’ pessimism.
“It is improbable,” he wrote, “that an industry that prides itself on its modernity, flexibility and innovativeness will be unable to meet the requirements of the regulation, especially with the range of technological possibilities and alternatives currently before it.”
He was also skeptical of an industry expert’s claim that 65,000 jobs would be lost nationwide if the California law took effect in all the states that have approved it.
On the broader question of whether tailpipe emissions play a role in climate change, Judge Sessions wrote, “Evidence presented to this court also supports the conclusion that regulation of greenhouse gases emitted from motor vehicles has a place in the broader struggle against global warming.” About 40 percent of California’s greenhouse-gas emissions come from cars and trucks.
