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California Attorney General Jerry Brown is expected to hold a news conference at the Port of Long Beach today to announce California’s plan to sue the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for continuing to “wantonly ignore its duty” to regulate greenhouse gas pollution from ships, aircraft, and construction and agricultural equipment.

California is one of a number of states that have warned that they are prepared to take legal action against the governement agency. The other states being New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Oregon and the city of New York.

In a statement released yesterday Brown said “Ships, aircraft and industrial equipment burn huge quantities of fossil fuel and cause massive greenhouse gas pollution yet President Bush stalls with one bureaucratic dodge after another."

"Because Bush’s Environmental Protection Agency continues to wantonly ignore its duty to regulate pollution, California is forced to seek judicial action,” remarked the Attorney General.

Brown said that he had formally petitioned the EPA to initiate regulatory action in October 2007, December 2007 and January 2008. Since issuing the petitions, the Attorney General claims the EPA has "done nothing but issue a pathetically weak 'Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking' on July 11th 2008".

Brown said that if the EPA ignored the state of California’s petitions, the EPA would be in violation of the Clean Air Act which requires the agency to adopt standards for greenhouse gases.

Under the Clean Air Act, the EPA has 180 days to respond with appropriate regulation action. Brown warned that California would sue the federal government for unreasonable delay if the agency does not issue timely regulations for ocean-going vessels, aircraft and nonroad engines.

The Attorney General said the lawsuit would be based on the following:

* The EPA’s failure to make explicit findings that industrial equipment, ships and aircraft emit greenhouse gas pollution that endangers public health or welfare.

* The EPA’s failure to adopt timely regulations to control such emissions.

“If President Bush was serious about America’s dangerous and growing foreign oil dependency, he would forthwith direct EPA to do its job and regulate greenhouse gases,” said Brown.

In his statement, Brown said the world's fleet of large ocean-going vessels emits approximately three percent of the world's total greenhouse gas emissions and that these emissions are projected to increase by almost 75 percent over the next 20 years.

Referring to the EPA's own findings, Brown said the EPA's recent proposal states that marine vessels that purchased fuel in the U.S. emitted 84.2 million metric tons of CO2 in 2006, or 3.9 percent of the total U.S. mobile source CO2 emissions.

The Attorney General also accused the International Maritime Organization (IMO) of failing to adopt controls on greenhouse gas emissions. He said the IMO Marine Environment Protection Committee (MEPC) recently planned to inventory greenhouse gases by 2009 but made no commitment to regulate such emissions.

Today's news conference is due to take place at 11:30 A.M at the following address:

Port of Long Beach Administration Building.
925 Harbor Plaza,
Long Beach
California