Good  work EPA! In a 180 degree turn around from the Bush Administration policy, the EPA, under Lisa Jackson, has authorized California's Clean Air Act waiver, allowing them to regulate tailpipe emissions - a move they made initially in 2004, but battled with the Bush folks for 4 years over. 

Yeah! 

Basically the deal was that since the Feds weren't doing anything on tailpipe emissions, California was going to 'go it alone', so to speak. But they were quickly followed by more than a dozen other states, all of whom had to make a request to be stronger than the Clean Air Act from the EPA - which repeatedly denied the request. 

The EPA (under Bush) and the auto industry cooked up a brilliant defense - 'we don't want a patchwork quilt of air regulations - we need one standard to combat tailpipe emissions, a national one'. 

This, we all knew, was bunk. The automakers didn't want to clean up their act, and new that if one state started in on it, others would (and did) follow. It cracks me up then to see the quote from Dave McCurdy, auto industry spokesman with the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers which read, "We are hopeful the granting of this waiver will not undermine the enormous efforts put forth to create the national program." 

I'm sure that he is. 

You can check out the SF Chronicle story here