Arrogance and Warming

Scathing NYT editorial on EPA's waiver denial:

The Bush administration’s decision to deny California permission to
regulate and reduce global warming emissions from cars and trucks is an
indefensible act of executive arrogance that can only be explained as the
product of ideological blindness and as a political payoff to the automobile
industry.

The decision, announced Wednesday by Stephen Johnson, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, overrode the advice of his legal and technical staffs, misconstrued the law and defied both Congress and the federal courts...

It also makes a very good case against the argument that a national standard is better than patchwork state regulation:

One of Mr. Johnson’s arguments was that a "national solution" to carbon dioxide emissions was preferable to a "confusing patchwork of state rules." A national solution is precisely what the administration has refused to offer. And the California rule — once in force there and in 17 other states — would in fact constitute a uniform standard covering nearly half the car market. That is why the automakers lobbied so fiercely against it.