SACRAMENTO, CA – In the world of petty politics, it’s a fool’s errand to bet that there is any action so absurd as to deter the ambitious politician. Common sense and the well-being of fellow-citizens come second to the aspirations of the office-seeker. And so it is that we see California Attorney General Bill Lockyer (D) file a lawsuit against the purported perpetrators of global warming — the global automobile industry. “Vehicle emissions are the single most rapidly growing source of the carbon emissions contributing to global warming,” says Lockyer, “It is time to hold these companies responsible for their contribution to this crisis.”1

The timing of this lawsuit is not coincidental. In just six weeks, Lockyer faces an election for State Treasurer. No doubt he expects to burnish his populist credentials with a round of big-business bashing and environmental chicanery rolled into one. But the facts are against the merits of his frivolous lawsuit, in which he seeks to pin the opprobrium for ill-understood planetary phenomena on a dispersed and decentralized industry.

The formal complaint2 lists General Motors and Ford, and the North American operations of Toyota, Chrysler, Honda and Nissan as contributing to global warming that is “harming California, its environment, its economy, and the health and well-being of its citizens.” The specific harm is listed as “an earlier melting of the snow pack, raised sea levels along California’s coastline, increased ozone pollution in urban areas, increased … threat of wildfires, [and] millions of dollars [in costs to the state government] in assessing those impacts and preparing for the inevitable increase in those impacts and for additional impacts.”

Lockyer’s legalese is prosaic, but the factual merit is nearly absent. Taken in turn, the purported harms to California recede into inchoate allegations at best. In particular, Lockyer’s charge that there is “increased ozone pollution in urban areas” is spurious: as the Pacific Research Institute’s Steven Hayward showed, in the 2006 Index of Leading Environmental Indicators, California’s cities have seen massive improvement in ozone pollution in the past generation3. The number of days per year in which the city of Los Angeles exceeded the EPA’s 1-Hour Ozone Standard has steadily declined, from nearly 200 in 1975, to nearly 25 in 2005 — a decrease of 87.5%. The rest of the United States’ urban areas have shown a similar improvement in air quality, without the benefit of grandstanding from electioneering state attorney generals.

Left unmentioned, of course, is the fact that ozone is irrelevant to global warming. Ozone, or O3, is a pollutant at low altitudes — but it is not a “greenhouse gas” like carbon dioxide, or CO2. But then, science is secondary in the California Attorney General’s attack on the automobile industry.

What besides automobiles produce greenhouse gases? As the National Association of Manufacturer’s Carter Wood notes, “California's 36 million people [also] exhale CO2. Watch out.” And, just so Lockyer can mount a comprehensive assault on climate change, Wood asks, “[Are] any other manufacturers producing carbon dioxide? Let's start a list … [and request] a cease and desist order. Stop driving, and you manufacturers, stop making cars. Right now. Lest you cause more harm.”4 Wood’s grasp of the internal logic of Lockyer’s suit is sound — but let’s not expect that logic to be pursued any further beyond the demands of what Sean McAlinden, an economist with the nonprofit Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, Michigan, calls “the silly season of elections in the fall.”5

An objective assessment of the automobile industry reveals a rather different picture from that presented by Lockyer’s apocalyptic pronunciamento. Hayward, in the 2006 Index, lays out the facts. Between 1970 and 2003, that industry has achieved immense reductions in annual emissions in the United States: in volatile organic compounds, about 17 million tons to about 4 million tons; and in carbon monoxide, from about 160 million tons to under 60 million tons. In that same period, emissions per mile driven in the U.S. have dropped even more dramatically: in hydrocarbons, from just under 11 grams per mile to nearly zero; and in carbon monoxide, from about 85 grams per mile to about three. That’s a steep downward trend — made more impressive by the tremendous increase in the number of automobiles in the given time period — that shows no signs of abating. It’s not too much to say that the automobile industry has done more to alleviate the problem of emissions — and hence climate change — than Lockyer’s suit could ever hope to accomplish.

Climate change deserves a serious look from scientists and policymakers. But at the point at which policy crosses over into politics, low-road tactics may masquerade as high-minded endeavor. California Attorney General Bill Lockyer’s attack on the automobile industry is a reminder that facts and sensibility are no barriers to plain opportunism.