California Attorney General Edmund G. Brown last Friday wrote congressional leaders urging that the auto industry bailout package now being hammered out include language that would authorize states to implement California’s greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions standards for motor vehicles. Brown has been battling the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on the issue for the past two years.

In a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) and Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT), Brown urged Congress to require the California standards to be adopted as part of any financial help to Detroit’s Big Three automotive manufacturers. It should be part of their requirements to revitalize the U.S.-based auto industry, Brown said.

“For more than 40 years, California has had the authority to set stricter standards than the federal government for automobile emissions under the Clean Air Act,” Brown wrote. “For 30 years, other states have been permitted to adopt those tougher standards; [it] has worked exceedingly well.”

Saying the auto industry has attacked the California standards wherever and whenever it could, Brown said California three years ago added GHG emissions standards for motor vehicles and more than a dozen other states have adopted them, only to be stymied by the federal EPA.

California’s GHG standards require a 30% emissions reduction from motor vehicles by 2016, something that more than a dozen other states also have adopted.

“That’s why I am urging you to condition any taxpayer assistance to the automobile industry on an explicit authorization for California and other states to implement California’s landmark GHG emission standards,” Brown said in his letter to the congressional leaders.

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