Air Official Seeks Talks With Auto Companies
The head of the California Air Resources Board expressed hope Tuesday that the state and the auto industry could work out their differences over California’s new law cracking down on so-called greenhouse gas emissions.
Speaking at an annual summer auto conference in northern Michigan, CARB Chairman Alan Lloyd said Gov. Gray Davis had instructed him to meet with auto executives after the industry vowed to fight the legislation in court.
“This seems to be the ideal opportunity to engage in a dialogue,” Lloyd said at the conference, not the most welcoming of milieus for pro-environmental views. “I welcome the opportunity to sit down with the auto industry to work out our differences.”
The state legislation requires auto makers to significantly reduce vehicle emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases linked to global warming by the 2009 model year. The law also covers methane, nitrous oxide and fluorocarbons.
The industry objects to the law, saying it is a thinly disguised mandate to increase fuel economy, an area for which the federal government is responsible, not individual states.
General Motors Corp., the world’s largest auto maker, intends to reduce carbon dioxide emissions but believes that legislation restricting the gas is the wrong way to improve air quality, said Christine Sloane, GM’s director of advanced technology strategy.
“If you want to stabilize CO2 levels in the atmosphere ... the developed world would have to reduce CO2 emissions by 90%, and no economy can handle that,” she said. Trying to control carbon dioxide in California alone would not help global climate control, she said.
Sacramento-based Lloyd said he did not have a timetable to meet with specific auto executives. But when he does, he said, he will tell them that 80% of Californians support cleaner autos and that other countries have put limits on carbon dioxide emissions.
“I will say we have a piece of legislation which is very broad,” he said, “but it is an opportunity for us to work together toward a common target.”
David Garman, the Energy Department’s assistant secretary for energy efficiency, said that because carbon dioxide is not considered a pollutant, the California law is aimed not at reducing pollution but increasing gas mileage. And that, he said, “by federal law, is the job of the Department of Transportation.”
CARB has two years to come up with details of the standards, assuming the law withstands legal challenges. GM and DaimlerChrysler won an injunction in June against the state’s zero-emission vehicle mandate, under which the six largest manufacturers would have to have 4% of their cars and trucks sold in California be emission-free by the 2003 model year.
Lloyd would not speculate on how the issue might play out in the courts, but because “we haven’t even defined the measures yet,” he said, critics “can’t call them draconian.”
