EEE会議（地球温暖化問題で訴えられる米国環境保護庁)...............................................................031017


ブッシュ政権が地球温暖化防止に熱心でないとの批判は米国内にも根強くあり、とく
に州レベルで温暖化防止策を積極的に進めているところでは、連邦政府の尻を叩く動
きが出てきております。　最近カリフォルニア州では、連邦政府の環境保護庁(EPA)
が工場等からの排気ガス（温暖化効果ガス）を規制する権限がないと決定したことに
関して同庁を裁判に訴えることを計画しており、この動きに、ニューヨーク、マサ
チューセッツ、オレゴン州など９つの州が、シエラクラブ、天然資源防衛基金(NRDC)
等の戦闘的環境保護グループと一緒に、参加する模様だとのことです。　もっとも、
これはカリフォルニア知事のリコール選挙前の話で、シュワルツネッガー新知事がど
う対応するかはまだ分かりません。　詳細は、１０月４日付けのNew York Times記事
でどうぞ。
--KK

*********************************************

States Plan Suit to Prod U.S. on Global Warming

By DANNY HAKIM

Published: October 4, 2003


DETROIT, Oct. 3 ・California plans to sue the Environmental Protection
Agency over the Bush administration's recent decision that the agency lacked
the authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from tailpipes and other
sources, state regulators said on Friday.

Nine other states, including New York, Massachusetts and Oregon, as well as
environmental groups like the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense
Council, are expected to join the suit. The legal strategy, an effort to
prod federal action on global warming, sets up a battle between the Bush
administration and the states over policy on climate change.

In California, the suit is also seen as an effort to stave off challenges to
the state's plan to regulate automotive emissions of greenhouse gases.

"This issue is vital to the future of our state," Gov. Gray Davis said in a
statement. "It affects important resources like our rich agricultural lands;
Sierra snowpack; the safety of our forests and our seaside communities."

Mark Merchant, a spokesman for the E.P.A., said: "It's apparent that
California is reading the Clean Air Act one way and the E.P.A. is reading it
another way. There's a difference of opinion there, and California has
decided to ask the court to make a decision."

The move comes after suits filed by several states challenging the Bush
administration's loosening of regulations over power plants.

Mr. Davis's administration announced on Friday that the suit against the
E.P.A. would come in a matter of days. California and the other states and
environmental groups planned to make a joint announcement within a few
weeks, but the Davis administration moved up its timetable because of the
impending recall election, people briefed on the planned lawsuit said.

The suit stems from the E.P.A.'s decision, announced in late August, that it
did not have the authority to regulate emissions of carbon dioxide and other
gases linked to global warming trends. Many scientists, but not all, say
such trends are leading to a variety of health and environmental problems.

The E.P.A. decision came in response to a petition from environmental groups
to take action on climate change and was a reversal of the Clinton
administration's policy on the matter. Environmental groups and regulators
in several states say the Clean Air Act does give the federal government
such authority.

"If the United States is ever going to regulate greenhouse gases, it will
start with a victory in this lawsuit," said David Bookbinder, Washington
legal director for the Sierra Club.

The Clean Air Act directs the government to regulate air pollutants,
including "any physical, chemical, biological radioactive substance or
matter which is emitted into or otherwise enters ambient air" if they "may
reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare." Climate
change is included as a possible harm to public welfare.

The case could resolve whether greenhouse gases will be classified as air
pollutants.

The nine other states expected to join the suit are New York, Washington,
Oregon, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Maine, Illinois, Vermont and Connecticut,
officials in California said Friday.

Because of its history of smog problems, California has long been the most
aggressive state on matters of air policy. Because the state's air policies
predated the Clean Air Act, it has the authority to set its own standards,
and other states can pick California's more aggressive rules over the
federal government's.

Last year, California's Legislature became the first and, so far, only
legislative body in the nation to enact a measure aimed at curbing global
warming emissions from cars.

The legislation put the state at odds with the auto industry, which is
widely expected to sue the state. Environmental groups are concerned that
the E.P.A.'s ruling could be used as a legal argument to undercut
California's authority to regulate greenhouse gases.

"California has the dual motive of wanting the federal government to do the
job and to push back on the attempt of the Bush administration to interfere
with California's attempt to do its job," said David D. Doniger, a policy
director at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Mr. Merchant said the E.P.A. action did not necessarily preclude California
from acting on its own.

The auto industry has yet to file suit because the specifics of the measure
itself have not been written. The ultimate tenor of the regulation depends
on who occupies the governor's office, because the chairman of the state's
Air Resources Board is an appointee of the governor.

Arnold Schwarzenegger, the leading Republican candidate whose enthusiasm for
Hummers has unsettled environmentalists, supports the legislation.

"California's landmark legislation to cut greenhouse gases is now law," a
statement on his Web site says. "I will work to implement it and to win the
expected challenges in court along the way."