The EPA’s decision last month to refuse to allow California to impose stricter standards on tailpipe emissions was based on the claim that “climate change does not affect California in any compelling or extraordinary way to warrant state limits on greenhouse gases.” But a report scheduled for release today from Stanford University shows that “Global warming is making breathing more hazardous for Californians than other Americans,” according to the Sacramento Bee.

With six of the most polluted cities in the country, California bears a disproportionate share of air pollution-related deaths and illnesses. And rising temperatures are making matters worse; the Stanford study estimates that each 1.8 degree Fahrenheit temperature rise causes an additional 1,000 deaths and many more cases of respiratory disease every year in the U.S.

The study’s author, Mark Jacobson, a Stanford atmospheric scientist, told the Sacramento Bee that “increased warming due to carbon dioxide will worsen people’s health in those cities at a much faster clip than elsewhere in the nation.”

As Nicole noted a few posts back, California”along with fifteen other states–has already filed a lawsuit challenging the EPA’s “unconscionable” decision, as Governor Schwarzenegger rightly described it. The EPA has declined to comment on the Stanford study. Funny how states’ rights seem to vanish into thin air when it comes to regulating greenhouse gases.