Automakers must have been bad this year, because Santa has given them a big holiday disappointment. And by Santa we mean U.S. District Judge Anthony Ishii, who today declared that California has the authority to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions from vehicles, and tossed out automakers’ lawsuit against the state. Automakers had sued in 2004 when California passed a law requiring vehicles on its roads to produce 30 percent less greenhouse gases by 2016. Sorry, suckas! That’s one down, one to go in California’s fight to do right by the climate and the people who breathe its air; the state can’t implement its program until it receives a waiver from the U.S. EPA. California has sued to speed up that decision; an EPA spokesperson says the determination will come down by the end of December. If the EPA says yea, as many as 16 other states may implement California’s standards.
