Charging the Bush administration with a “gross dereliction of duty,” California Attorney General Jerry Brown said he would petition the Environmental Protection Agency to crack down on rising aircraft emissions that contribute to global warming.
“This is a battering ram,” said Brown, who is joined in his petition by four other states and Southern California air pollution officials. “Climate change is the most important environmental issue facing the U.S. and the world. We have to keep pounding on the White House door until they finally wake up.”
The petition comes as diplomats gather in Bali to revive international negotiations on climate change. The 1997 Kyoto Protocol did not directly cover aviation, and the U.S., which is responsible for almost half of global aircraft exhaust, has fought efforts to cap emissions under the CAO.
Aviation accounts for about 2% of worldwide carbon dioxide emissions. But jet-fuel exhaust, unlike the tailpipe pollution of cars and trucks, occurs miles above the Earth’s surface in the delicate stratosphere, where it creates swaths of icy condensation, boosts ozone levels and magnifies the heat-trapping effect.
Earthjustice, an Oakland-based legal group, was to file a similar petition today on behalf of three national environmental groups: Oceana, Friends of the Earth and the Center for Biological Diversity.
“There is an unrelenting global demand for increased air transport of both passengers and goods,” said Alice Thomas, an Earthjustice attorney, noting that the U.S. and China recently signed an agreement to double passenger flights by 2012.
The petitions to spur federal rules for airline emissions follow efforts, led by California, to force car and truck manufacturers to slash the tailpipe emissions of carbon dioxide. The state has sued the EPA to allow it to enact its own tailpipe rules. And in October, Brown filed a petition, along with environmental groups, asking the EPA to crack down on greenhouse gas emissions from oceangoing vessels.
Joining Brown’s aviation petition were Connecticut, New Jersey, New Mexico and Pennsylvania. The South Coast Air Quality Management District — the smog control agency for Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties — also signed on.
There is no specific deadline for the EPA to respond to the petition.
EPA spokeswoman Margot Perez-Sullivan declined to address the issue of aircraft regulation. However, she noted that various voluntary programs last year “prevented an estimated 100 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions, equivalent to the annual emissions from more than 60 million vehicles.”
Valere Tjolle
