California Sues Automakers for Global Warming

Just a few weeks ago, California lawmakers adopted the nation’s first global warming law, mandating that manufacturers cut greenhouse gas emissions. Now the state has filed the first lawsuit ever to hold auto manufacturers liable for the damages caused by vehicle emissions, according to state Attorney General Bill Lockyer.

Environmental groups have applauded the lawsuit, saying that it will just help the state to curb greenhouse gas emissions and force the auto industry to face up to building vehicles that pollute the atmosphere less. Dan Becker, director of the Sierra Club’s Global Warming Program said that California’s new law will "cut global warming emissions by 25% and that’s a good start, and this lawsuit is a good next step."

Lockyer told Reuters that the state will seek "tens or hundreds of millions of dollars’ from automakers. The suite seeks monetary damages for past and ongoing global warming and demands that the auto manufacturers named in the complaint be held liable for future damages to California. The lawsuit says that the state is already spending millions of dollars to deal with beach erosion, ozone pollution, reduced snow pack, and the impact on endangered animals and fish, effects that some scientists believe are due to global warming. "The injuries have caused the people to suffer billions of dollars in damages," the lawsuit says, "including millions of dollars of funds expended to determine the extent, location, and nature of future harm and to prepare for and mitigate those harms, and billions of dollars of current harm to the value of flood control infrastructure and natural resources."

California was the first state in the nation to target the auto industry in 2004 with new rules requiring car makers to force cuts in tailpipe emissions from cars and trucks. So far, however, automakers have successfully blocked those rules with their own legal actions. One industry analyst says that one of the main agendas behind California’s lawsuit, which an auto industry trade group calls a "nuisance suit," is that it is a way for the state to pressure car manufacturers to accept the new rules and stop fighting them. "That’s the objective," said David Cole, chairman of the Center for Automotive Research. "They want to get the automakers basically to bow down and pay homage to the [emissions] law."

Cole said that it will be tough for the auto industry to immediately address the concerns of some critics, and he predicted that other states will quickly jump on the bandwagon if California’s lawsuit is successful. The suit is similar to one dismissed by a New York court, that is not on appeal. The judge in the New York case ruled that the issue is a political one rather than a legal one, and should therefore be addressed by the state legislature, not the court.

Cole said that the adoption of diesel engine emissions technology or gas-electric hybrid engines is very expensive, and improvements in gas mileage will translate to smaller, lighter vehicles, and those trade-offs are not attractive to most consumers. "These are not free technologies," Cole said. "Most people are price sensitive."

The complains names General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co., Toyota Motor Corp., the U.S. arm of Germany's Daimler Chrysler AG, and the North American units of Japan's Honda Motor Co. and Nissan Motor Co. Ltd..