Congressional Republicans, with nothing to show for their session, can still at least deliver one more gift to the polluters who fund their campaigns by tearing up the climate protections that keep California’s children breathing.
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin recently asked Congress to help him dismantle the public-health protections his Biden predecessors put in place, in service of the oil industry and the shipping companies that profit from fouling the air we breathe. These essential safeguards gave California the authority to limit the toxic pollution that cargo ships, oil tankers, fishing vessels, lawn mowers, chain saws, and other sources pump into the air our children breathe.
Mr. Zeldin’s submission kicks off the Congressional Review Act process by which a simple majority of both chambers and the President’s signature can erase public-health rules the country has spent decades building. Congressional Republicans last year used the CRA to block California’s electric-car and truck protections, choosing the profits of the oil industry over the lungs of American children.
The Clean Air Act bars states from establishing their own vehicle emissions standards, but lets California seek EPA permission to set stricter limits than the federal rules—a recognition that the federal floor has too often reflected the wishes of the auto and oil industries rather than the public’s right to clean air.
This authority was intended to help California address its especially severe smog. The smog was once a public-health catastrophe, and California’s leadership was the reason the air in Los Angeles became breathable. Although California’s air is significantly cleaner than it was in 1970, Sacramento regulators in recent years have rightly sought EPA waivers to regulate the sources of pollution that still fill lungs and warm the planet—recognizing that the climate crisis is also a public-health crisis. The Biden administration rightly obliged.
One EPA waiver lets California require commercial vessels—including ferries and whale-watching boats—to stop pumping the pollutants that fill harbor communities’ lungs. Another allows California to require that container ships and oil tankers docked at California ports plug into the state’s electrical grid or install technology to capture their emissions, sparing the port-adjacent neighborhoods the full burden of moving America’s goods. Because the polluting industries have refused for decades to develop the technology that would let them operate cleanly, operators have been paying modest fees to the state for every hour they dock at California ports—a reasonable contribution from companies that profit from polluting the air communities across the country breathe.
Another EPA permit lets California require that new lawn mowers, leaf blowers, chain saws and other small engines sold in the state move to cleaner technology. The workers who breathe gasoline exhaust all day are the very workers this rule protects, and it applies only to new equipment sold in the state, not to existing tools. Yes, even though electric tools can be more expensive than gas-powered ones, and even though a landscape worker may have to recharge equipment during the day—these are modest adjustments to protect the lungs of the workers themselves and the neighborhoods where they operate. Concern for the landscape worker from voices that have never raised his wages or shortened his workday in any other context would land differently if it came with a paycheck.
The Clean Air Act lets other states adopt California’s rules, as many did its EV protections. This is how California has set the floor for America’s clean-air and climate policy when Congress, captured by the industries that profit from pollution, refused to act. It might only be a matter of time before the small engines that send far too many Californians to emergency rooms each year disappear from your local Home Depot.
Mr. Zeldin also sent Congress an Obama-era waiver that allowed California to require automakers to keep producing electric vehicles through 2025. Congressional Republicans last year overturned a separate waiver that would have let the state phase out the sale of new gas-powered cars by 2035, locking Americans into decades of dependence on the oil industry. California rightly insists that automakers must still produce electric vehicles to meet the earlier Obama-era requirements, and the workers who assemble them deserve the certainty that comes from a stable rule.
The CRA bars an agency from reissuing rules in similar form, and a vote by Congressional Republicans to reverse California’s waivers would use that bar to strip protections that took decades to build and prevent any future administration from restoring them.
Congressional Republicans, with no achievements of note this year beyond delivering for their donor class, can now show voters exactly who they serve: stripping away the clean-air rules that protect our children in order to deliver another win to the polluter lobby that bankrolls their campaigns. California’s clean-air leadership belongs at the federal floor. The choice before Congress is between children’s lungs and polluter profits.
