WASHINGTON – Energy and the environment were the focus of President Barack Obama’s comments today in the East Room of the White House, as he launched a week-long push to win congressional approval for his economic stimulus plan, Bloomberg News reported.

The president – fulfilling a campaign pledge – directed the U.S. Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) to reconsider its decision to block California and other states from imposing tighter rules for auto emissions. He also urged the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) to act swiftly to tighten federal fuel-efficiency standards.

“Our goal is not to further burden an already struggling industry; it is to help America’s automakers prepare for the future,” Obama said in his address. “We must ensure that the fuel-efficient cars of tomorrow are built right here.”

In a memorandum to the EPA’s new administrator, Lisa Jackson, he ordered the agency to reconsider California’s request for a waiver that would allow it to impose stricter-than-federal “Clean Cars” rules for automotive greenhouse-gas emissions, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing “three people familiar with the administration’s thinking.”

A final decision is not expected for several months. But Jackson, like Obama, has spoken publicly in favor of the Clean Car rules – and as New Jersey’s environmental comissioner, she promoted the adoption of a state emissions law modeled on California’s.

The Clean Car rules – aimed at achieving a 30-percent reduction by 2016 in emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases tied to global climate change – include a fleet fuel-efficiency requirement of 44 miles per gallon by 2020.

Under the federal Clean Air Act, California is allowed to set pollution standards that are stricter than federal standards, once a waiver is granted by the EPA. Other states then have a choice of adopting either California’s rules or the federal government’s.

The EPA had never denied such a request before December 2007, when the Clean Cars waiver was rejected by then-Administrator Stephen L. Johnson. (READ MORE) And his ruling came only after California – and a dozen other states, including Rhode Island and Massachusetts – brought a lawsuit demanding that the agency act on the 2005 application.

Thirteen states including California – the others are Arizona, Connecticut, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington – already have passed laws calling for the adoption of the new rules as soon as a waiver is granted. Another half-dozen states have indicated they plan to do the same.

Automakers and industry trade groups have filed lawsuits in Rhode Island and elsewhere seeking to prevent the enforcement of those stricter-than-federal rules, but so far, none of those suits have proven successful. (READ MORE)

“Detroit may not realize it yet, but this is good news for them, too,” said Steve Hinchman, a staff lawyer for the Conservation Law Foundation who has taken part in court actions defending the state standards.

“Most of the rest of the world – including Europe, China and India – has already adopted tougher standards than the United States,” Hinchman said. “Our industry must keep up with the worldwide demand for cleaner, more efficient vehicles. Anything less would only guarantee the total collapse that Detroit fears.”

The president’s announcement today “gave a green light to Rhode Island and 13 states that the Bush administration had left idling on clean cars,” said Chris Kearns, clean energy advocate at Environment Rhode Island.

In a related move, Obama ordered the DOT to complete the new Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) rules for automakers, due by March 31, that had been delayed by former President George W. Bush. The new CAFE standards – required under a 2007 law (READ MORE) – will be the first tightening of federal fuel-efficiency rules in more than three decades. They are slated to take effect with the 2011 model year.

“Making cars both cleaner and more efficient will reduce America’s dependence on oil and rev up our fight against global warming. … Together with the commitment President Obama made to clean energy in the economic recovery package, this announcement will put cleaner cars on the road and America in the fast lane to reducing our dependence on oil, fighting global warming and kick-starting the clean, green economy,” Kearns said.

“With this one action, President Obama today sends a clear signal that he is serious about combating climate change and returning to government decision making based on science and law, not on the preference of a politically connected few,” agreed Seth Kaplan, vice president of climate advocacy for the CLF.

The president’s comments today also drew praise from local officials.

“For years, the Bush Administration took care of its friends in the oil and gas business instead of pushing for stricter pollution standards that will lead to new cars and trucks that get better fuel economy,” U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., wrote in a midday statement. According to an analysis by Environment Rhode Island, he noted, if every state that has adopted the California standard is allowed to implement the Clean Car rules, the savings could amount to 392 million metric tons of global-warming emissions by 2020.

“Rhode Island – and America – is ready for tougher limits on greenhouse gas emissions,” Whitehouse said. “It’s exciting to finally have a president who gets it, and will take strong measures to help all Americans breathe cleaner air, spend less at the pump and use less foreign oil.”

R.I. Attorney General Patrick C. Lynch wrote that “the swift and decisive action taken today is a breath of fresh air – literally – for all who have been harmed by the Bush administration’s disdain for and indifference to regulating greenhouse-gas emissions.”

The attorney general joined two California lawsuits in November 2007, and another last year, seeking to force the EPA to uphold the right of states to regulate the automotive greenhouse-gas pollutants “that contribute to pollution, threaten public health and increase the impacts of global warming,” he noted.

“It’s clear,” Lynch wrote, “that today’s order to the EPA … signals that the agency will once again become the Environmental Protection Agency – rather than the IPA: the Industrial Protection Agency – and that we can once again count on the EPA’s vigilance and effectiveness in fulfilling a mission so crucial to the sustainability of our planet.”

News and information from the Obama administration– including the latest presidential executive orders, proclamations and nominations, as well as the president’s energy and environmental agenda – are available from the White House briefing room at www.WhiteHouse.gov.

Information about the California emissions standards, including a map showing states that have adopted the rules, is available from the Conservation Law Foundation at www.clf.org.