Environmental Protection agency (EPA) insiders claim Vice President Dick Cheney was responsible for blocking California’s proposal to toughen auto emission standards:

Staff at the agency (EPA), which announced last week that California’s proposed limits were redundant, said the agency’s chief went against their expert advice after car executives met Cheney, and a Chrysler executive delivered a letter to the EPA saying why the state should not be allowed to regulate greenhouse gases.

Then, as political appointees are wont to do:

EPA staff members told the Los Angeles Times that the agency’s head, the Bush appointee Stephen Johnson, ignored their conclusions and shut himself off from consultation in the month before the announcement. He then informed them of his decision and instructed them to provide the legal rationale for it, they said.

But Johnson retorts:

Johnson said that because Bush signed an energy bill last week which raised fuel economy standards, there was no justification for separate state regulation. The president, the agency said, had provided a “clear national solution” and there was no need for a “confusing patchwork of state rules to reduce America’s climate footprint from vehicles”.

But Johnson’s staff gave him the opposite advice, warning him that should he block California, the state would probably sue him in the courts and would probably win. The state’s governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, immediately announced that he would challenge the EPA’s ruling in the courts, describing it as “legally indefensible”.

In other words, dear readers: Vice President Cheney, colluding with auto manufacturers, instructed the EPA to reject California’s attempt to decrease auto pollution.