I never knew 2 of anything could be considered a patchwork. Any quilters out there wish to weigh in on how many distinct pieces are required to consider it patchwork?

Pretty bad news indeed.

It is clear that as a global polutant, California specific regulation will be tough to defend. The thing is that the supreme court ordered EPA to regulate the CO2 emissions which they haven't done yet. The CAFE standard regulate mileage and cannot be taken as an emission regulation. So that's were they might win eventually if they argue that EPA failed to regulate the CO2 mission, as ordered by the supreme court then they can't deny the right to california to regulate it. The story is not over.

The Federal automobile lobby is very busy working to reject the California plan because this would require an even higher mpg factor for the automobile companies to meet.

How can the Administration and their political cronies be so short sited? I hope Arnold and the Supreme Court can take care of them swiftly! It is shameful that we have to sue the government bureaucrats to make them actually do their sworn duty!

Did Stephen Johnson say all that (especially the part about setting the bar high) with a straight face? Is he corrupt? a wimp? the stupidest man on earth? or all three perhaps. This is the head of the EPA? God save our planet!

Raymond. I like the way you think regarding powering the US and A with big solar wind.

But I'm sure electric cars will happen in the EU first. They have plenty of electricity generation capability at night time. No.. it won't be all that clean, but its getting cleaner & cleaner. Maybe they could figure out a way to run electricity up from Africa?

BTW.. does anyone know how to convert grams of CO2 / mile to Miles Per Gallon? Got to pull out the old 6.02 x 10^23 constant?

I'm trying to compare the MPG of the 2020 proposal to california's 2012 proposal.

In some parts of the world, the entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well. Industry sees opportunities in catering to the tide of green legislation. In the UK, companies like Modec ( http://www.modec.co.uk ) and particularly Smith EV ( http://www.smithelectricvehicles.com ) are being encouraged to cash in on demand for greener transport worldwide.

America seems to instead be fighting to preserve older industrial interests, by slowing down each potential advance. The USA will thereby get left behind. Smith are going to be producing 15,000 electric delivery trucks a year by 2010. Carmakers in China will capture an EV market that the USA is blocking its own workers from participating in. The US government is being extremely shortsighted in seeing greener aims as a threat, whilst the rest of the world sees them as a business opportunity.

Wake up America!

Even the new U.S. standards are totally inadequate and are riddled with loopholes like flex fuel. The net effect in reducing greenhouse gases will approach zero when the complete turnover of vehicles occurs. If they really care about so called patchwork regulations, perhaps they should adopt the European or Japanese standards.

The Bush administration is moving forward only to the extent that they are being dragged forward. Too bad the California lawsuit doesn't include criminal penalties for crimes against the planet.

Maybe, there is some blue sky in the EPA decision. California is failing to meet air quality goals for currently regulated criteria emissions. Just spend sometime in LA and Bakersfield in the summer! Many of the strategies that reduce NOx, Air Toxins, particulates, etc., (e.g., Electrification of transportation and port operations, Diesel to Bio-methane/Hythane/LNG conversions of LDV, MDV, HDV, and Locomotive fleets, and electric hybridization of vehicles) will also reduce GHG emissions and are well within state control or subject to state and lcoal incentives.

California is quite capable of utilizing economic measures under its undisputed and local control (e.g., vehicle registration and licensing fees, business licenses for refueling stations, carbon taxes, etc.,) to accomplish significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.

At some point, consumers need to take control of their destiny, and demand industry labeling of products and services for carbon content, so we can avoid buying products or utilizing services from countries or states that do not embrace sustainability and control of Greenhouse gas emissions. For example, if the southeastern states of the U.S. don't care about generating electricity from renewables, and want to continue using cheap pulverized coal plants, and dumping the CO2, particulates, and mercury in the common atmosphere to support their industrial base, than consumers are free to avoid visiting those states, and purchasing products with their high carbon content.

Arnold needs to get more creative, and rely less on less effective command and control measures. California also needs to be more aggressive in exposing the massive HOAX surrounding crop based ethanol as a measure to increase energy security and reduce GHG emissions.

Mean&Green:

Last time I checked, Southern Company (et. al.)was still marketing electric resistance water heaters as more efficient and less polluting than natural gas equivalents. The same kind of thing could happen with electric vehicles (whose batteries could be charged primarily from centralized electricity generated from natural gas.

Sgnificant eforts were made to disclose emissions data via appliance "yellow stickers" to no avail and nothing of that sort is in the just signed energy bill.

California's energy efficiency policies used to be "source-based" but not necessarily source emissions based. Perhaps they should have been. However, it is my impresswon that California's energy efficiency policies have become cost-based. So continue to run up demand for natural gas (hence cost)via centralized electrical generation and eventually electricity wiil monopolize energy. Is that a good plan? Perhaps California and the Feds just need to work out a few kinks.

Bush only represents the wishes of the powerful in their attempt to retain power over the majority.

My hope for this new legal mandate to increase the CAFE mileage standard is that success is only possible with a nearly complete conversion to electric propulsion.

In the recently passed Omnibus spending bill, subsidies to nuclear power are many billions; a clear signal that automobile-related industries see more profit via hydrogen and fuel cell technology than in the more practical, applicable and thus desirable Plug-in Hybrid vehicle development. Bush is only answering to the powerful in this regard as well. He and the republican party (including all the 2008 republican presidential candidates) are waging war 'upon' the USA.

Hey Wells:

As if the NRDC/EPRI alliance for PHEV isn't big business?