The NYT brings us news that our lawnmowers are the biggest polluters ever. Many of us already knew that burning 2-cycle gas or whatever, with that oil you pour in there couldn't be good for the environment, but did we know how bad it really is?

Gallon for gallon — or, given the size of lawnmower tanks, quart for quart — the 2006 lawn mower engines contribute 93 times more smog-forming emissions than 2006 cars, according to the California Air Resources Board. In California, lawn mowers provided more than 2 percent of the smog-forming pollution from all engines.

Of course the simple measure of adding a catalytic converter is fiercely opposed by the industry. But here comes the Give Up effect, California doesn't give a shit what the industry wants.

On one side, the federal Environmental Protection Agency and state regulators in California. On the other, the largest lawn and garden equipment maker in the country and a powerful Republican senator. And in the middle, the six million or so lawn mowers shipped to retailers every year.

For older regulators, it is a replay of Detroit's initial resistance to those who wanted clean up car exhaust by installing catalytic converters, which pull smog-forming chemicals and carbon monoxide out of the exhaust.

"I think it's very analogous to what happened in the 70's," said Robert Cross, chief of the California air agency's Mobile Source Control Division. "The arguments are all the same."

A pending regulation in California that is scheduled to take effect next year, if the E.P.A. approves, would tighten emission requirements for small engines, cutting 22 tons of smog-forming chemicals from the California air daily, or the equivalent of more than 800,000 cars a day. It would almost certainly require the use of a catalytic converter — a requirement that Briggs & Stratton, the dominant engine maker in the struggling lawn care equipment field, vigorously opposes.

Sadly, this asshole Bonds is single handedly preventing the effect from being made a nation-wide improvement on emissions by allowing other states to piggy-back on California's regulations.

Senator Bond's main adversaries are regulators in California, who have largely independent authority to set air emission standards independent of the Environmental Protection Agency. In the 1990's the California Air Resources Board first put controls on emissions from these engines and subsequently tightened them. The new, tougher standards they drafted in 2003 would be the first that are likely to require the addition of a catalytic converter.
...
In 2003 and 2005, Mr. Bond inserted provisions into appropriations legislation to delay the California regulations and limit their possible scope. The 2003 amendments, reached as part of a deal with Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, took away the right of other states to adopt California's tougher regulations and required the E.P.A. to hold off its approval until it satisfied itself that the California rules would not entail safety risks.

And in typical industry fashion, the PR spiel is that the industry has improved itself so much already, why should it do more? Also, they make it sound like improvements gleaned over the years were their idea (coal energy commercials are a great example of this particular lie)

Patricia Hanz, an assistant general counsel for Briggs & Stratton, said, "We acknowledge that there's an air quality problem in California." But she added that Briggs engines were 70 percent cleaner than they were than 15 years ago, before regulation.

Funny, that last round of regulation didn't wipe them out and it improved emissions 70%. Now they have the opportunity to lower emissions to essentially nothing, and the environmental equivalent would be the removal of 800,000 cars a day from California's roads. To bad this crook Bond is more interested in groveling at the feet of the industry giving him money than caring for the environment of his constituents. So, overall, a mixed Give Up message. If the Californians were able to do this without Bonds' interference, this could have had a nationwide benefit. As it stands, only Californians will have the enjoy the difference in pollution from removing 800k cars from the roads.