California Wins Global Warming Case Brought by Auto Industry

In a significant victory in the fight to reduce global warming pollution, today the Federal District Court in Fresno dismissed the auto industry's claims that federal law barred California from enforcing it own motor vehicle greenhouse gas regulations. In a 57-page decision, Judge Anthony Ishii held that these regulations did not in any way conflict with either federal fuel economy laws or with the President's power to conduct foreign policy. Emphasizing that the Clean Air Act expressly authorizes California to regulate emissions that affect human health and the environment, Judge Ishii found that Congress did not intend that this authority be curtailed by federal fuel economy laws. Sierra Club intervened in the case, on the side of the California Air Resources Board, which had set the clean-car standards ordered by Assembly Bill 1493 of 2002, authored by Fran Pavley.

Once again a judge has found the auto industry’s desperate attempts to stay mired in outdated, dirty technology completely without merit. Today’s decision is just one more reason why EPA should stop dragging its feet and grant the waiver California needs to move forward with this vital tool to combat global warming.

Just as we said earlier this year when we celebrated a similar victory in a Vermont court, instead of the automakers thinking of excuses, it’s time for them to put their immense know-how toward solving some of our most pressing problems. This ruling should compel the U.S. automakers to make the kind of clean, efficient cars Americans want--the kind that foreign automakers have used to surge to record profits as the U.S. auto industry buckled under the weight of its gas guzzlers. This ruling is good for the environment, good for America, and, ultimately, good for the automakers.

It’s now time for the Bush Administration’s EPA to get out of the way and grant California the waiver it and other states need in order to move forward with these landmark protections.

Big Victory for National Forests

Sierra Club Victory in Ninth Circuit Deals Blow to Bush Administration’s So-Called "Healthy Forests" Initiative

Court Rules That Administration Cannot Ignore Environmental Laws to Log Forests

San Francisco, California--In the case of Sierra Club v. Bosworth, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the U.S. Forest Service erred when it conducted logging projects nationwide without prior analysis of their effects on the environment.

Sierra Club and Sierra Forest Legacy (formerly named Sierra Nevada Forest Protection Campaign) filed the suit in October 2004 challenging the Bush Administration's "Healthy Forest Initiative" rule that eliminated a 30-year-old Forest Service practice of analyzing the environmental effects of timber sales up to 1,000 acres and prescribed burns up to 4,500 acres
before allowing such projects to proceed.

Today’s ruling from the Ninth Circuit said the U.S. Forest Service erred because it:

• Exempted from the National Environmental Policy Act a huge class of logging classified as "fuels reduction" first, and then later gathered the environmental impact data
• Failed to assess the cumulative effects of logging 1.2 million acres per year nationwide
• Failed to assess highly controversial and uncertain risks of impacts
• Failed to put more specific constraints on what can be logged

Statement of Eric Huber, Senior Staff Attorney, Sierra Club

"This victory is a blow to the Bush Administration's cynical "Healthy Forests" initiative and will help protect millions of acres of national forest each year from destructive and unnecessary logging projects. This ruling will help ensure that vast swaths of our national forests are not logged without environmental reviews under the guise of forest management or fuel suppression. The Sierra Club supports forest management practices that actually seek to protect communities and our precious wild forests and minimize the risk of wildfires, but this case is just one more example of the Bush administration's disastrous overreach on environmental issues.

The courts have once again had to tell the administration that it simply cannot ignore laws--environmental and otherwise--simply because it finds them inconvenient."

Statement of Craig Thomas, Executive Director of Sierra Forest Legacy
"In California, since the adoption of the Bush Administration rule, we have witnessed the gross abuse of discretion and ramp-up of logging with limited environmental review that we feared. Logging without environmental safeguards damages our forests and the public's trust in Forest Service management."

The full opinion can be viewed here.

Vote yes on Prop 93

Sierra Club California has endorsed Proposition 93, the Term Limits and Legislative Reform Act, on the Tue., Feb. 5, ballot.

Prop 93 would allow a legislator to serve up to 12 years in the Senate, the Assembly, or a combination of both. California’s current term limit allows 14 years, but these must be divided into a maximum of six years in the Assembly and eight in the Senate.

Experience

Legislators need time in Sacramento to learn about environmental issues and the legislature's sometimes arcane rules. Today, in the Assembly especially, even committee chairs and top leadership have limited experience. Often they are appointed after only two years in Sacramento; sometimes even brand-new legislators are appointed. Prop 93 will give them more time to gain experience and expertise—essential for dealing with complicated environmental issues with long-term consequences.

Lobbyists

With less turnover of members, there will be fewer of the novice legislators most vulnerable to industry lobbyists’ false arguments and lies. Consider the history of global-warming legislation. In 2002, first-term Assemblymember Fran Pavley authored California’s first important global-warming law, AB 1493, the clean-cars bill. In 2006, in her final term, Pavley authored her landmark AB 32, but only a small minority of the assemblymembers serving then had been in the legislature in 2002. This year, when Assemblymember Ruskin’s clean-car-discount bill, AB 493, lost on the floor, not a single member had been in the Assembly in 2002, and many members bought some of the same bogus arguments the auto industry had made in 2002.

Oversight

Committees chaired by experienced lawmakers will be better able to oversee state agencies and bureaucrats. With more time to serve in one house, legislators can gain knowledge of the inner workings of agencies. We need lawmakers with the institutional memory to follow the implementation of environmental laws by state agencies. Consider again AB 32. Like many bills, this requires state agencies to undertake a complex process of decisions on how to carry it out. Largely due to today's term limits, Fran Pavley is no longer in the legislature to help watch over the implementation of her landmark bill.

Money

Under the current limits, once members are elected to the Assembly and come to Sacramento, they immediately start to eye their next elective office. With the possibility of 12-year careers in the Assembly, they will feel less need to raise money--and therefore less reliance on special interests. They will be able to devote more time to governing and policy-making. Prop 93 could also slow the revolving door that sends many former members into lobbying jobs–usually for industry, since public-interest jobs mean a big pay cut.
The Sierra Club urges you to vote yes on Prop 93--to bring more experienced legislators to Sacramento.

Transportation Commission Turns Toward Clean Air

Yesterday I joined other clean-air advocates from around the state in asking the CA Transportation Commission to reinstate air quality as one of the key factors to consider when bond money to improve trade corridors is doled out. The CTC had previously removed air quality from the list of criteria compiled by its own staff, but after public testimony yesterday the commissioners restored it to the list. Breathers who live near busy ports and rail and truck routes now can have some hope that the public's money will be spent on transportation projects that make the air cleaner, not dirtier.

This decision may signal the beginning of a new and much-needed integration of transportation and air-quality policies at the state level. Dale Bonner, Secretary of Business, Transportation & Housing, kept an open mind and met with all the interested parties, including state and local air quality advocates. The Air Resources Board also deserves credit for speaking up at yesterday’s meeting.

Bill Magavern, Senior Representative, Sierra Club California

NUCLEAR INITIATIVE BITES THE DUST

Proponents of a ballot measure to repeal California's 1976 nuclear safeguards act -- which prohibits new reactors until there is a permanent solution to the problem of disposal of high level radioactive waste -- yesterday quietly withdrew their proposed initiative from circulation. Apparently having trouble getting sufficient signatures to qualify, and enough financial backing and public support to pass, they pulled the plug on the effort.

"Nuclear power is the most dangerous technology on earth, with risks of meltdowns, terrorist attack, proliferation, and leaking long-lived wastes." said Dan Hirsch, President of the Committee to Bridge the Gap, one of the initiative's opponents. "This humiliating reversal for a proposed initiative to revive it in California is a great victory for common sense. Now the state can focus on safe and sensible renewable solutions to global warming."

Bill Magavern, Senior Representative for Sierra Club California, said, “California has much cheaper, safer and quicker solutions to our electricity needs. We should be moving forward with 21st century clean energy technologies instead of pouring more money down the nuclear rathole.”

Conservation Groups Sue State to Block Effort to Streamline Killing of Endangered Coho Salmon

With coho salmon teetering on the brink of extinction, the California Board of Forestry recently adopted new rules to make it easier to kill the remaining coho, without addressing the well-known shortcomings of the state’s logging rules.

The Environmental Protection Information Center (EPIC) and Sierra Club brought suit against the salmon-killing rules in San Francisco Superior Court today, arguing that the Board has a legal responsibility to protect fish, wildlife and resources, and that rules focused exclusively on making it easier to kill endangered salmon are beyond the Board’s authority.

California’s logging rules have long been identified by state and federal wildlife agencies as allowing harm to endangered salmon. See declaration of Joe Blum, NMFS. In the summer of 2006, the Secretary of the Resources Agency proposed a broad statewide rule package to address the shortcomings of California’s Forest Practice Rules as they relate to salmon. Shortly thereafter, the Governor’s Office apparently intervened on behalf of the timber industry, and the proposed habitat protection approach was abandoned.

The coho salmon rules being challenged in this lawsuit make no improvements to logging rules to protect salmon habitat, and only apply when coho will actually be killed by the logging operation. If the logging plan will kill coho salmon, the rules require only certain limited mitigations – regardless of site conditions, nothing more can be required.

“The Board of Forestry should be tightening lax logging rules that allow even more habitat damage. Instead, they’re giving away permission to kill threatened salmon,” said Scott Greacen, Executive Director of EPIC.

Sierra Club California’s forestry advocate Paul Mason observed, “We need to protect and restore salmon habitat, not limit environmental protections and make it easier to kill endangered coho.”

The suit also seeks to overturn new Road Management Plan (RMP) regulations that do not provide for independent review, implementation, monitoring, approval, or amendment. The importance of correcting roads that adversely impact salmon and steelhead habitat with sediment is well known. Richard Gienger, long-time salmon and watershed advocate, points out that "The existing rules, if properly implemented, will prevent sedimentation from roads. Without an independent process or adequate standards, the Board of Forestry's RMP is an unwarranted and confusing duplication and a travesty compared to a real Road Management Plan that would actually have utility and long-term positive effects."

Oppose Initiative Effort to Skew Electoral College for Partisan Advantage

Sierra Club opposes an initiative proposal currently in circulation that would change California’s method of apportioning its electoral votes in presidential elections. The Golden State, like 47 other states, awards all of its electoral votes to the winner of the state’s popular vote. The initiative would award one electoral vote to the leading vote-getter in each congressional district, as is currently done in Maine and Nebraska.

While reforming the electoral college is a very legitimate topic for debate at the national level, this particular initiative is a transparently partisan ploy undertaken by Republican political operatives who are trying to offset the Democratic advantage in California without doing anything to address the Republican advantage in other big winner-take-all states, like Texas. As an environmental advocacy group that engages in the electoral process, we urge our members to decline to sign petitions for the measure, which is entitled “Presidential Electors. Political Party Nomination and Election by Congressional District.”