http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121478564162114625.html

An April 2007 Supreme Court Decision that found that carbon dioxide emissions from cars are pollutants under the Clean Air Act and therefore subject to regulation has prompted the EPA to start drafting regulations on how the government can effectively cut ozone-depleting emissions from the transportation sector. Wall Street Journalists have been privy to the unreleased draft.

The court's ruling centered on emissions from automobiles. But it set the stage for regulations affecting the entire U.S. economy -- from power plants to factories and ships -- by ordering the EPA to determine whether greenhouse gases endanger public health or welfare, the legal criteria for regulating greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act.

In recent weeks, the Bush Administration warned that regulatory havoc would result if the EPA were to regulate greenhouse gases under the act. The White House argues the act restricts the EPA from considering costs when imposing regulations and could ultimately mean the agency would have to regulate nearly everything that created emissions, including hospitals, schools and apartment buildings.

The EPA draft document concludes that motor vehicles could be even more fuel efficient than currently required by law. Based on advanced technologies such as plug-in hybrid vehicles, fuel efficiency could be improved to well above 35 miles per gallon between 2020 and 2025, it says. A 2007 energy law that has been supported by the Bush administration mandates an average vehicle fuel-efficiency of 35 miles per gallon by 2020.

For other sectors, the EPA draft document shows how emissions such as carbon dioxide could be regulated through the government-permit process and through a cap-and-trade system similar to the programs the agency administers for acid rain and mercury.

Congress is currently investigating EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson and the White House for denying California a waiver to regulate their own greenhouse gas emissions and for editing significant science out of government reports that were supposed to be politically non-biased.

Wall Street Journal; June 30, 2008

Submitted by B. Shapiro