Nonprofit Groups Look to Court and California to Curb U.S. Oil Habit

The courtroom has emerged as a key front in the battle by nonprofit groups to curb America’s oil use and combat global warming.

After it became clear that the Bush administration

did not plan to impose strict federal auto-emissions laws or fuel-economy standards, a dozen nonprofit groups — including Greenpeace, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and the Sierra Club — joined 15 states and municipalities two years ago in suing the Environmental Protection Agency for failing to consider carbon dioxide, a major component of car exhaust, as an “air pollutant” subject to the agency’s oversight.

In April, the Supreme Court ruled in the charities’ favor, in what Carl Pope, executive director of the Sierra Club, described as “probably the most important Supreme Court environmental ruling in history.”

President Bush has since asked the EPA and other federal agencies to take until the end of 2008 to study the issue and propose any new regulations designed to combat carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

State Actions

California has not been waiting for federal action to curtail auto emissions. The state has had auto-emissions regulations in place since 1961, years before any federal standards were developed. Because it pioneered emissions regulations, California is the only state allowed by the EPA to develop and enforce emissions standards that are different from those imposed by the federal government. Other states can choose to adhere to the federal emissions regulations or adopt those enacted by California.

In 2002 California passed legislation requiring that new vehicles sold in the state meet increasingly stringent emissions limits — including limits on carbon dioxide — beginning in 2009.

The aim is to reduce the gases from cars and trucks that contribute to global warming by 22 percent by 2012 and 30 percent by 2016.

Automakers can meet these new restrictions by making cars designed to run on less-polluting biofuels or even electricity. However, the most direct way to abide by the new regulations is through increased fuel efficiency. Some analysts suggest that the emissions restrictions are the equivalent of requiring that all new cars get at least 29.6 miles per gallon by 2010 and more than 43 miles per gallon by 2016. Such numbers would have a major impact on U.S. oil consumption.

Ever since the 2002 law was passed, it has been tangled up in court challenges from automakers, and it has not received the required approval from the EPA. Nevertheless, a dozen other states — including Massachusetts, New York, and Oregon — have adopted California’s 2002 standards.

“Perhaps the greatest opportunity for philanthropic dollars right now is to help more states adopt California’s greenhouse-gas standards for automobiles,” says Hal Harvey, environmental program director at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, which has made more than $300,000 in grants to this cause since 2006. “Even if the legislation is not upheld, it sends a powerful political message to Washington about the need for federal standards.”

‘Clean-Car Campaigns’

The Energy Foundation has awarded more than $8-million in grants since 2000 to environmental groups around the country working to advance and spread California’s vehicle standards to other states. Often called “clean-car campaigns,” these efforts educate citizens and lawmakers about the importance of lowering auto emissions, reducing oil use, and taking the voluntary and regulatory steps to do both.

Eric Heitz, president of the Energy Foundation, says the reason it has spent so much on the issue is that his group believes strict automobile-emissions standards are “a primary driver for a new federal fuel-economy policy.”

Taking a contrarian view, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a Washington think tank that promotes free markets, filed a legal brief in the Supreme Court case in opposition to what it calls “global-warming alarmism.”

“One of the problems with what you might call mainstream environmental groups is that they are generally fans of big government and tend to push for even bigger government,” says Sam Kazman, the institute’s general counsel. “The whole global-warming issue may well make their dreams come true, which is very bad for the public.”