What Motivated Stephen Johnson?

Stephen Johnson is the EPA chief who rejected his own staff's recommendations to grant California a waiver to regulate our own greenhouse gas emissions. Senator Boxer hauled him in front of the environmental committee she chairs for a grill session to see what the heck prompted him to ignore science and decades of legal precedent. LAT

"I was not directed by anyone," Johnson said at a hearing before the environment and public works committee, denying he had been influenced by political pressure from the White House or anyone else. "This was solely my decision."

Johnson failed to mollify Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), the committee chairwoman and perhaps his fiercest critic, who vowed to press ahead with her investigation into how the EPA chief reached his decision. Within hours of his testimony, she introduced legislation -- co-sponsored by 17 senators, including Democratic presidential front-runners Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Barack Obama of Illinois -- to overturn the decision.

Good. They should. There appears to be no reasonable explanation for the rejection other than the car industry doesn't like California regulating its own air.

In his first Capitol appearance since denying California's request late last month, Johnson drew the ire of other Democratic senators whose states also want to enact greenhouse-gas-emission standards for new cars and trucks that are more stringent than the federal government's.

"Your agency's decision to deny California a waiver just defies logic to me," Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) told Johnson. "It's clearly a decision, I believe, that's based on politics and not on fact."

Boxer called Johnson's decision "unconscionable" and accused him of going against the advice of his legal and science advisors and siding instead with the auto industry, which has resisted California's efforts to implement its tailpipe law.

There are fifteen other states that have sided with California and want to enact the same regulations we passed.

The EPA has stonewalled Boxer's attempts to get information on the decision. They even went to far as to cover up some documents with duct tape. Yes duct tape. It would be amusing if the subject were not so important to our quality of life.

In all reality it will likely take a new administration and a Democratic at that to let the states regulate their own greenhouse gas emissions.