California's cleaner cars.

Byline: The Register-Guard

By passing a law mandating reductions in automobile emissions, the state of California has stepped in to fill a vacuum left by Congress and the Bush administration. It should be the federal government's responsibility to protect the country's environment, economy and national security. But California is big enough to act as an effective substitute, prodding the auto industry to move in the right direction.

Overcoming a $5 million lobbying blitz by the auto industry, the state assembly passed and Gov. Gray Davis signed a bill directing the California Air Resources Board to set limits to achieve the "maximum feasible reduction" of auto and truck emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide. The board will prepare its emissions regulations by 2005, and they will take effect in 2009.

California's law is primarily intended as an effort to slow global warming, a problem the federal government has declined to address. The United States is the world's leading source of the greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming; cars and light trucks are responsible for a third of those emissions. Atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, the primary greenhouse gas, are already 31 percent above historical levels. Reducing vehicle emissions is a vital element of any effort to scale back the rate of global warming.

President Bush remains unpersuaded that global warming is a problem, or if it is, that responses such as California's are effective. But even those who are agnostic about global warming can find solid reasons to support tighter automotive emissions limits.

Lower emissions can be achieved mainly by improving fuel efficiency. Raising the average gas mileage of cars and trucks would be a desirable goal even if global warming were not a concern. California has enacted not just an environmental law, but an economic stimulus plan and a homeland security measure.

It's dismaying that the federal government has left it to California to pursue such a broadly beneficial policy. Congress first set fuel efficiency standards for motor vehicles in 1975, in the wake of the Arab oil embargo. Those standards haven't been updated in 17 years. In the meantime, the average fuel efficiency of the nation's automotive fleet has begun to slip - mostly because of consumers' preference for sport-utility vehicles and light trucks. The average new automobile sold in 2001 was no more fuel-efficient than the average vehicle sold 20 years earlier.

In the year 2000, the United States imported $90 billion worth of petroleum, more than half of the nation's supply. Next to vehicle imports, petroleum imports were the largest single contributor to the nation's record trade deficit. And unlike imported cars and trucks, imported oil comes from volatile parts of the world where disruptions in supply are always a possibility. Reduced consumption through improved efficiency would strengthen the U.S. economy while reducing the nation's vulnerability to embargoes or other shocks beyond its control.

These gains are not speculative. The National Academy of Sciences report estimated that the mileage standards already in place save 2.8 million barrels of oil a day, more than would be obtained by the increases in domestic production proposed under the Bush administration's energy plan. Further savings on an equal or greater scale can be achieved with existing technology.

California's car market is the nation's largest, which means its law will get the automakers' attention. But this initiative should not have been left to a state - it ought to be embraced as a nationwide goal. It wasn't California that landed a man on the moon in the space of a decade. It shouldn't be California that propels the nation's shift to cleaner, more efficient transportation over a comparable number of years.