Feds sued by 16 states over environmental standards

Written by Rhodos in Thursday, January 3rd 2008 under Health

How happy would you be if some company you trusted with your personal information let that information fall into thieves hands? How much more insult to injury if they weren’t legally required to inform you, except that some of the victims lived in California, and their law requires it?

This parallels in that the federal government believes it’s knows the individual states ecological systems better then the states themselves. California in fact is suing the EPA over it’s denial of applying tougher standards then what the government wants to blanket over the country. The Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in a statement to the press, “It is unconscionable that the federal government is keeping California from adopting new standards.” The EPA (Environmental Protection Agency), the “wonderful” company that brought you MTBE which is still poisoning the environment, also known as “Two-Bit Crooks” as Dr. Bill Wattenberg puts it, has not returned a response.

The lawsuit also challenges the EPA absurd conclusion that “California is not uniquely affected by global warming and so lacks the compelling and extraordinary conditions that would allow it to regulate greenhouse-gas pollutions.”

An excerpt from the New York Times article explains California’s actions:

“California regulators, Ms. Nichols added, have just calculated that in 2016, the state’s standard would reduce carbon dioxide output by 17.2 million metric tons, more than double the 7.7 million metric tons that would be eliminated under the new federal fuel-economy standard.

California’s cumulative reductions from 2009 through 2016 would be 58 million tons; she said — triples the reductions the federal standards would provide.”

Unless attempting these tougher standards costs the federal government more money, I don’t see the issue with a state exercising its ability to manage its own greenhouse emissions standards.

Joining in the lawsuit are New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Vermont, Arizona, Illinois, Minnesota, along with other states.

Source doc: nytimes