Posted for Richard Van Noorden

In his latest reversal of Bush policy, Barack Obama looks set to allow California to enforce its own limits on greenhouse gas emissions from cars.

Along with thirteen other states, California wants to cut greenhouse gas emissions from car exhausts by 30 percent from 2009 to 2016 – something that car makers aren’t too happy about. But in December 2007, the state was denied its necessary waiver from national standards by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Obama is telling the EPA today to reconsider that decision – and the agency’s regulators are expected to grant a waiver after formal review, the New York Times reports.

Obama is also telling the Transportation Department to speed regulations for federal standards, passed in 2007, that aim to raise average fuel efficiency to 35 miles per gallon by 2020. California’s standards would be stricter than that: the Los Angeles Times reports that “some estimates” say the necessary caps on carbon emissions would effectively require vehicles to reach as much as 42 mpg by 2020.

‘We think we should have our decision in hand by late May,’ Mary Nichols, the head of California’s Air Resources Board, tells Reuters.

Obama is also highlighting renewable energy investments in his $825 economic stimulus plan.

“With the fuel economy measures and clean energy investments in the recovery package, President Obama has done more in one week to reduce oil dependence and global warming than George Bush did in eight years,” Daniel Weiss, director of climate strategy at the US liberal thinktank Center for American Progress, tells the New York Times.

Image: Getty