California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger says he’ll sue to overturn a Bush administration ban on tough California greenhouse gas emission standards. The EPA decision, which was made against EPA staff recommendations and appears to have been dictated to EPA chief Stephen Johnson by vice president Dick Cheney, would prevent California from imposing tougher standards than those implied by the energy legislation president Bush signed into law on Wednesday.

Schwarzenegger said that “EPA’s denial of our waiver request to enact the nation’s cleanest standards for vehicle emissions is legally indefensible and another example of the failure to treat climate change with the seriousness it demands.” The California suit will be watched by 17 other states which had planned to echo the California standards had the EPA granted the waiver allowing their implementation.

EPA staff told the Los Angeles Times that “California met every criteria . . . on the merits. The same criteria we have used for the last 40 years on all the other waivers. We told [EPA chief Johnson] that. All the briefings we have given him laid out the facts.”

Therein, of course, lies the rub: some facts are more equal than others, and the fact that Cheney fully supports the auto industry executives who are adamantly opposed to the California plan, and with whom he met repeatedly prior to the EPA decision, is much more substantial than the fact that the state’s request was reasonable and legally sound.

No word on whether Schwarzenegger will preemptively junk his four Hummers in favor of a Prius.

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