NEW YORK: California has gone head to head with the Bush administration over its approach to global warming, suing the US government for its refusal to allow the state to press ahead with its own cuts in car pollution.

The move takes the increasingly adversarial relationship between California and Washington into a state of open confrontation: California which wants to impose sharp cuts in greenhouse gas emissions and accuses the federal government of dragging its feet on the issue.

The legal action, supported by several other US states, is a rapid counter-punch by California to a decision last month by the federal body in charge of environmental policy — the Environmental Protection Agency — that denied the state the right to impose clean-air standards that are tougher than national limits.

The governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger, who is backing the lawsuit, called the Bush administration’s block on the state’s attempt to combat global warming “unconscionable”.

He accused the EPA of “ignoring the will of millions of people who want their government to take action in the fight against global warming”. —Dawn/Guardian News Service