Just in case anyone still wondered, President-elect Barack Obama has now made it plain he is a greenhouse gas believer. He gave no truck during his campaign to skeptics' frequent claims that climate change has nothing to do with human activity, and it's now certain he won't as President.
It is also evident that one of his first orders of business will be to establish a federal greenhouse gas-reduction plan that looks a lot like what California is devising under the mandate of the 2006 measure known as A.B.32. That's the landmark California law requiring cars and stationary pollution sources to cut their overall carbon dioxide emissions back to 1990 levels over the next 12 years.
California has been frustrated for more than a year in this department because George W. Bush's administration refused to give a go-ahead for the state to adopt strict vehicle emission rules as part of that effort. Under the previous six Presidents, green lights for smog-cutting measures tougher than federal standards had always been automatic.
Why the Rejection
At Bush's behest, the federal Environmental Protection Agency maintained that granting the state a go-ahead like those received for every other anti-pollution advance of the last 37 years would interfere with federal plans to adopt national rules, creating confusion for automakers.
Of course, there are no such federal plans. Nor would there have been any interference with plans if they did exist. For 16 other states now automatically adopt any new California clean-air standard within four years after it's passed here. Those states, together with California, account for more than half the vehicle sales in America — which in practicality means the moment California gets a green light, carmakers must get ready to sell California-qualified cars elsewhere, too.
But the Bush Administration claptrap will not last much longer. Obama made that clear in a strongly-worded video played the other day as part of the opening ceremony of an international climate change conference hosted by Gov. Schwarzenegger.
Obama’s Next Big Change
"Too often, Washington has failed to show leadership (on greenhouse gas reductions)," Obama said. "That will change when I take office. My Presidency will mark a new chapter in America's leadership on climate change that will strengthen our security and create millions of new jobs in the process… We'll establish strong annual targets that set us on a course to reduce emissions to their 1990 levels by 2020 and reduce them by an additional 80 percent by 2050."
He was, therefore, adopting the precise goals of A.B.32, written by then-Assemblywoman, now state Sen.-elect Fran Pavley of Los Angeles and Ventura counties, and later signed by Schwarzenegger after he negotiated some changes to soften it.
If there was any doubt one of his first acts as President will be to grant the delayed California waiver, Obama removed it by saying:
Ready, Partner?
"I promise you this," he said. "Once I am President, any governor who is willing to promote clean energy will have a partner in the White House." That could have been a description of Schwarzenegger.
In short, Obama was announcing one change he will bring in his first days in office.
For Schwarzenegger, this means he's lost his mantle as America's loudest and most visible governmental advocate in the global warming fight. But it will also mean that many goals he's pursued will come to fruition, or at least a start in that direction.
So there was satisfaction in his voice when Schwarzenegger said, "That is staggering. This is so huge. That's really big, because now we as a nation can lead, like we do in other things. Now we can inspire other nations…"
Schwarzenegger, entering his last two years as governor, plainly wants to be remembered for the climate change fight as much as for any other thing he's done. "Let me tell you," he said, "when I signed the nation's first law to cap greenhouse gas emissions, California was leading a revolution, but without any soldiers… Our revolution now has soldiers. It's spreading around the globe, and I'm very happy about that."
In effect, Schwarzenegger was passing a leadership torch to Obama, after years of carrying it through a dark time. And Obama indicated in strong language that he's ready to accept the relay handoff and run with it — another striking example of California pioneering a national and international trend.
Mr. Elias is author of the current book "The Burzynski Breakthrough: The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government's Campaign to Squelch It," now available in an updated second edition. tdelias@aol.com
Mr. Elias’s essays appear every Thursday morning.
