With Bush gone, Schwarzenegger leads new car emissions push

California is first in line to push the new Obama administration to undo some of the environmental harm caused by the president's predecessor.

Mary Nichols, chairwoman of the California Air Resources Board, has already written to the new head of the Environmental Protection Agency requesting that last year's decision to stop the state enacting stricter motor vehicle greenhouse gas emission standards is overturned.

To score some publicity points, that official request was backed up by a personal letter from California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to president Barack Obama asking him to direct the EPA to: "act promptly and favourably on California's reconsideration request so that we may continue our critical work of reducing our greenhouse gas emissions and their impact on global climate change."

In March last year, the Bush administration rejected a request by California and several other states for waivers to the Clean Air Act that would allow them to enact tougher standards than the law prescribed for vehicle emissions. It argued that only the federal government could impose standards, adding that a state-by-state piecemeal approach would be difficult to enforce and would make it harder for car companies to invest in cleaner vehicles.

That rejection was the first time the EPA had fully denied California a waiver under the Clean Air Act since Congress gave the state the right to obtain such waivers in 1967. Environmentalists argued that the Bush administration was in fact backing the US auto industry, which had tried and failed to get the California standards thrown out in several courts.

Schwarzenegger's letter called that EPA decision "fundamentally flawed" and requested its immediate reversal.

In her letter, Nichols said that an about-face could be fast tracked, without a new round of additional hearings, as the EPA is reconsidering a past decision and not making a new one.

The California standards would force automakers to cut emissions 30 per cent from their 2002 level by 2016.