For Immediate Release: December 7, 2003

Assemblyman Tony Strickland Releases a Letter Calling on Lockyer to Drop Lawsuit

SACRAMENTO, CA – The Pacific Research Institute (PRI) released a white paper today, by Sally C. Pipes and Benjamin Zycher, questioning the motives and validity of a lawsuit by several state Attorneys General against the Environmental Protection Agency. The Attorneys General (including California’s Bill Lockyer) and other groups are attempting to force the EPA to impose regulatory controls on vehicle emissions of carbon dioxide.

PRI’s white paper concludes that the lawsuit would have a devastating impact on the state of California. Sally Pipes, co-author of the study and President and CEO of PRI, argues, “regulatory controls on carbon dioxide emissions would impost large costs on very broad sectors of the economy. The resources for such compensation would have to come from somewhere – either budget cuts or new expenditures, neither of which can California afford.”

What’s more, the scientific foundation of the lawsuit is faulty. Marlo Lewis, Jr., senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, pointed out that “the degree to which the current warming is human-caused rather than the result of long-term climate shifts is unknown. Furthermore, carbon dioxide is not a ‘pollutant’ under federal law, and there is no evidence that Congress sought regulation of carbon dioxide emissions in the Clean Air Act amendments of 1990.”

Also in attendance at the press conference were CA Assemblymen Ray Haynes and Tony Strickland. Both are supportive of the paper’s findings. Assemblyman Strickland, in response to the white paper’s findings, released a letter to Bill Lockyer calling on him to drop the suit. “I cannot support the lawsuit against the EPA because it is based on faulty science and would devastate California’s economy,” explained Assemblyman Strickland.

The white paper can be found at www.pacificresearch.org.

###

About PRI
For more than two decades, the Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy (PRI) has championed individual liberty through free markets. PRI is a non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to promoting the principles of limited government, individual freedom, and personal responsibility.