Our View: The Green Light

Last week in Vermont, the other shoe dropped on whether states can forge ahead with plans to mandate that automakers produce cleaner-burning automobiles. The first shoe dropped in April when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that it is within the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s purview to treat carbon dioxide as a pollutant under the Clean Air Act.

Those two events are tied together by long-standing inaction by the federal government when it comes to cracking down on tailpipe emissions. For years, the EPA sat on the sidelines of the debate by maintaining the odd assertion that carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas, was not a pollutant. California, as it always has, then took the lead and adopted clean-car legislation. Several states in the Northeast and Northwest, including Vermont and Washington, passed similar legislation that was contingent upon California getting the green light from the feds.

The EPA must grant waivers to states that want to apply stricter standards than the federal ones. Instead, the feds and automakers have tied up clean-car legislation. The EPA professes to be worried that the technology used to tighten emissions would also improve gasoline mileage and only Congress can pass mileage-standard laws. Even if that hyper-technical excuse had merit, it would seem to be nullified by the fact that the president recently signed legislation that sets higher mileage standards. Would it be so horrible if that were accomplished by tightening emissions, too?

Automakers seem to think so, but they were shut down by a U.S. District Court judge in Vermont who upheld that state’s clean-car legislation. Judge William K. Sessions said the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers did not make a compelling case that such legislation would restrict consumer choice, imperil driver safety and wreck the industry financially.

Now that the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled, federal mileage standards have been raised and auto industry excuses have been swept aside, the EPA ought to grant states the clean-air waivers they seek.

That’s not to say that state-by-state mandates are the best solution, because they are not. It would be better for Congress to establish pricing solutions that push the responsibility for polluting onto polluters – that is, motorists.

A significant federal carbon tax and/or gasoline tax would create instant demand for cleaner-burning, better-mileage autos. The industry then would respond, thereby changing the marketplace. Those who chose to remain in large, inefficient vehicles would pay a premium to do so.

For a variety of reasons, that doesn’t look likely in the short term. But that doesn’t mean the federal government should stand in the way of states that are seeking solutions in the face of inaction.