The Regulatory Difference

There’s been a lot of attention paid, naturally, to what kind of laws a new administration and a new congress might pass — full of thoughts of what can and what can’t get sixty votes in the senate. But of course the president has regulatory authority as well. And some of this is extremely consequential. From yesterday’s Washington Post account of efforts to track and reverse pernicious Bush-era regulatory decisions:

The president-elect has said, for example, that he intends to quickly reverse the Bush administration’s decision last December to deny California the authority to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from automobiles. “Effectively tackling global warming demands bold and innovative solutions, and given the failure of this administration to act, California should be allowed to pioneer,” Obama said in January.

California had sought permission from the Environmental Protection Agency to require that greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles be cut by 30 percent between 2009 and 2016, effectively mandating that cars achieve a fuel economy standard of at least 36 miles per gallon within eight years. Seventeen other states had promised to adopt California’s rules, representing in total 45 percent of the nation’s automobile market. Environmentalists cheered the California initiative because it would stoke innovation that would potentially benefit the entire country.

“An early move by the Obama administration to sign the California waiver would signal the seriousness of intent to reduce the nation’s dependence on foreign oil and build a future for the domestic auto market,” said Kevin Knobloch, president of the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Before the election, Obama told others that he favors declaring that carbon dioxide emissions are endangering human welfare, following an EPA task force recommendation last December that Bush and his aides shunned in order to protect the utility and auto industries.

On this front, simply declaring that the EPA is going to start following existing law rather than all the key appointments being filled by people who see their job as preventing scientists from stiflign the work of agency scientists could make a huge difference. One assumes that in the course of things it really would take major congressional legislation to get the carbon issue squared away, but the EPA’s existing authority to regulate harmful pollution could both accomplish much good in its own right and also serve as a spur and a call to action in congress.