Since 1970, California has held a waiver under the federal Clean Air Act, allowing it to enact more-stringent pollution rules, and in 2009 President Obama took the state’s standards nationwide to increase fuel economy to 50 miles per gallon by 2025
The Trump administration may try to freeze fuel-mileage standards for cars which would override California’s authority to set its own air pollution standards, potentially gutting one of the country’s most important climate change regulations and setting up a major legal battle with the state.
“If enacted, this would harm people’s health, boost greenhouse gas pollution and force drivers to pay more money at the pump for years,” Stanley Young, spokesman for the California Air Resources Board, which oversees most of the state’s programs to fight climate change, said in an email. “It would also severely disrupt the U.S. auto industry, compromising its ability to succeed in a highly competitive global market that increasingly values innovative and efficient technologies.”
Read the article at the San Francisco Chronicle.
