Court: Fuel Economy Must Consider Global Warming

The Bush Administration was wrong to ignore the causes and consequences of global warming when it set new fuel economy standards for light trucks and SUVs, a federal Court of Appeals ruled yesterday.

The corporate average fuel economy, a.k.a. CAFE, standards were set in 2006, and would have required SUVs, minivans and pickup trucks to get 23.5 miles per gallon by 2010, up from 22.2 mpg.

But the court said that mark was "arbitrary and capricious" because it failed to account for transportation's contribution to the greenhouse gas pollution fueling global warming. Transportation has been the fastest-growing source of emissions in recent years, as more people have bought more and bigger cars and trucks. There was also no defensible reason the government holds those big vehicles to different, less stringent, standards than cars.

The ruling is the latest to hold up global warming as a force the federal government must reckon with. If the ruling is appealed, it goes to the Supreme Court, which earlier this year decided in favor of global warming regulation in a landmark decision that dealt with a different part of the federal bureaucracy but the same issues.

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