The Environmental Protection Agency is no longer part of the problem

FOUR years after Washington joined a regional move toward stricter auto-emission standards, the federal Environmental Protection Agency has approved California's original, trendsetting template.

Talk about an ambivalent moment. So many good ideas, so much wasted time and expense.

California started in 2001 to look for solutions that addressed the root of the cause, motor vehicles. In the absence of national leadership, California and other states headed off on their own.

The Bush administration refused to budge. The stalling tactics played out at EPA, where the bureaucratic chutzpah was impressive. The administration refused to grant California what amounted to, with all its known problems, a routine waiver to move ahead.

Indeed, the administration brazenly argued the EPA lacked authority to regulate auto emissions because federal pollution laws did not cover carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

In April 2007, the U.S. Supreme Court cut through the legal and political baloney to say the regulation of greenhouse gases fit well within the 1970 Clean Air Act and subsequent amended versions. The agency was empowered to regulate any pollutant likely to endanger public health and safety, which included climate or weather.

In the face of overwhelming evidence of a link between greenhouse gases and global warming, the administration could not credibly argue there was not an impact. Back to the stall, back to the courts.

California reapplied for a waiver along with Washington and more than a dozen other states around the nation, which represented more than half of the car-buying population. Again, Bush's EPA administrator said no. Congress had even passed tougher emissions standards in 2007, and the administration did nothing to put the regulations into law.

The change that led to the EPA announcement was elemental: the November 2008 election. By May of this year, President Barack Obama had ordered EPA to take a fresh look. He got the state to drop lawsuits and flat-broke U.S. automakers had already started to respond to legal and economic realities. Obama directed that complementary national emission standards be adopted by the Department of Transportation and EPA.

Cleaner, efficient cars and light trucks are coming, with American nameplates. Measurable improvements in emissions are coming. We will all breathe easier for it.