PD Editorial: California should fight for clean air

California once again finds itself at the center of a fight with the Trump administration, this time over fuel economy standards crucial to meeting clean air and climate action goals.

In a lawsuit joined by 16 other states and the District of Columbia, California is trying to stop the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency from rolling back rules requiring cars and SUVs to average about 51 miles per gallon by 2025 (or about 36 mpg in real-world driving).

If the EPA is allowed to shift into reverse, it will be bad for the environment, bad for public health and bad for the economy.

Transportation - especially cars and trucks - is the leading source of air pollution.

Lower fuel-economy standards would mean more smog. And more smog would threaten the health of people with respiratory problems, while undermining efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions and slow the pace of climate change.

Weaker standards would force drivers to buy more fuel, and they could cut U.S. automakers out of other countries, including China and large parts of Europe, that have pledged to phase out vehicles fueled by gasoline and diesel in the coming decades.

The aggregate impacts could be staggering. The standards enacted by the Obama administration would result in a reduction of as much as 6 billion tons of carbon dioxide pollution and, through improved gas mileage, $1.7 trillion in savings at the pump through 2025, Margo Oge, a former EPA transportation and air quality official, wrote in the New York Times.

None of that matters to President Donald Trump and EPA administrator Scott Pruitt - who deny climate change, ignoring settled science, and champion fossil fuel, promoting the interests of their political allies.

Which is why California and other states are back in court.

“Climate change is not a joke, the fires, the floods, the rising sea levels,” Gov. Jerry Brown said at a news conference in Sacramento last week. “This is real stuff, and if Pruitt doesn't get it, if Trump doesn't get it, they've got to go.”

The states that have signed on to the lawsuit have a combined population of 140 million people and represent 43 percent of the U.S. auto market, Brown said.

A dozen of those states have adopted California's strict fuel economy standards, which the state aligned with the federal regulations adopted by the Obama administration with support, at the time, from the U.S. auto industry.

As part of its push to relax the federal rules, the Trump administration has signaled that it will try to revoke California's authority, written into the Clean Air Act in 1970, to enforce its own, more stringent auto-emission standards.

If that fails, U.S. automakers may be faced with building separate versions of their vehicles - one for states that follow the federal rule and one for California and other states with higher standards. That could be a costly proposition for an industry that has struggled to compete with foreign automakers that have long given higher priority to improving fuel efficiency.

California's rules have provided cleaner, healthier air for millions of people and an incentive for automakers to develop hybrids and other innovations. They're an example for the world in this time of climate change. Retreating on our commitment would send the wrong message. So if the Trump administration wants a fight, California can't back down.

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