President Barack Obama announced last week he is reconsidering the Bush administration’s decision that denied California the right to set its own regulations on greenhouse gas emissions.
UCLA students and officials have responded to the announcement, many of them saying they see it as a step forward in the battle against climate change and global warming.
“I’m really excited about it. I think it is great that (Obama) is addressing it so quickly,” said Maya Kuttan, president of the Environmental Law Society at UCLA.
The state of California has made several attempts to obtain a federal waiver that will allow it to regulate gas emissions with much stricter surveillance than the federal standard. In 2002, California Sen. Fran Pavley helped usher in a new law that aimed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions for cars and trucks.
But the law lingered under former president George W. Bush’s administration, especially in December 2007 when the Environmental Protection Agency denied California’s request to set stricter regulations than the national standard.
Part of the reason why the administration denied the request was the auto industry’s worries that a “patchwork quilt” of regulatory schemes would blur the boundaries between state and national rules, said Cara Horowitz, the executive director of the UCLA Emmett Center on Climate Change and the Environment.
She said that once California is granted regulation, each state will be granted a choice between adopting California’s standard or continuing to use the federal standard.
Paul Weitzel, a third-year law student and president of the UCLA Federalist Society, also said that a waiver, if granted to California, would not demand that other states adhere to a stricter environmental policy.
Still, many environmentalists are pleased that if California adopts stricter regulation, other states might have an incentive to join the common cause as well.
According to the Los Angeles Times, at least 17 states have considered adopting California’s stricter regulations.
Auto makers, however, are not as reassured about a transition to stricter greenhouse gas regulation.
Many worry that complying with stricter state standards will be burdensome to the industry.
Nonetheless, climate change has gained ground as an issue deserving adamant attention.
Sean Hecht, executive director of the Emmett Center, said that the economic state of the country should not impede the enactment of policies that affect climate change.
“The pace at which this problem is growing is too great,” he said.
Paul Scott, co-founder of Plug In America, a non-profit corporation that advocates for clean air and energy independence, said that it is important for auto makers to understand that greenhouse gas regulations better both the environment and national security.
“With more fuel-efficient cars, we need less oil from other countries,” he said.
Moreover, complying with stricter regulatory measures might very well be “the key to the U.S. car industry’s future success,” Horowitz said.
Reducing emissions from cars and competing with cleaner vehicles will lessen carmakers’ dependency on foreign manufacturers, she said. She also added that the auto makers already have the technology to meet California’s standards. “They just need to adopt them,” she said.
California itself is a big state, and Horowitz said the transportation sector is the state’s largest source of gas emissions.
When cars produce greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, they enter the environment and disperse, contributing to the growing amount of gases already in the environment and destabilizing the climate.
For California, such destabilization would mean severe water shortages, fires, and the melting of Sierra glaciers, Horowitz said.
“I sense that auto makers are coming to realize that change is inevitable, and that they need to change as well,” Hecht said.
In a statement in response to Obama’s earlier announcement, General Motors representatives said, “We’re ready to engage the Obama administration and the Congress on policies that support meaningful and workable solutions and targets that benefit consumers from coast to coast.”
This consensus between auto makers and the new administration sends hope to many environmentalists and Californians that the ever-pressing issue of climate change will be addressed on a federal level.