Even the country’s biggest motorheads will concede that the nation’s Clean Air Act has been a huge success: Its standards have helped reduce hydrocarbon-based airborne pollutants by some 99% since the mid-1960s. Go ahead — take another deep breath.

Our zealous federal lawmakers of 1966 had no way of foreseeing the ever more complicated world of four decades hence. Who knew that carbon dioxide was going to factor into the equation in such a major way?

The truth is that this country has no control over the CO2 that every other nation pumps into the atmosphere. This fact became all too apparent when the international community joined up last week with that big blimp of hot air, Vice President Gore, to bash American environmental policy in Bali.

Back home, undeterred by anti-American sentiment, the Congress was in the process of passing the first new fuel economy law in 32 years. President Bush signed the legislation on Wednesday.

What a wonderful irony that the president — and not the Nobel laureate Mr. Gore — should be responsible for these tough new laws protecting Mother Nature. Almost one year ago, at his State of the Union Address, the president reminded us that one of the legacies of his administration would be to reduce America’s gasoline use by 20% over the next decade.

The centerpiece of these tougher standards is to make the nation’s passenger cars reach an average of 35 miles a gallon by 2020. It’s meant to be a gradual implementation and one that’s therefore friendly to Detroit. It’s also a fine opportunity to see Federalism flex its muscles in the way the Founding Fathers envisioned.

For the past four decades, California has reveled in being far stricter with fuel economy standards than the federal government. When the Clean Air Act first came to be, California successfully petitioned the Environmental Protection Agency for a waiver that would allow the state to set its own standards — so long as they were stricter than the national guidelines.

Now Californians are seeing red. Governor Schwarzenegger, not exactly everyone’s idea of a tree hugger, has vowed to fight the EPA’s first refusal to grant such a waiver in 40 years.

“We were very pleased that the EPA didn’t grant California another waiver,” the president and chief executive of the Association of International Automobile Manufacturers, Michael Stanton, told The New York Sun yesterday. “It would have been difficult for the industry to continue to meet more and more different sets of standards.”

Had California had been granted another waiver, the dozen or so other states that have been adopting its stricter fuel efficiency standards would have fought to fall in line with California as well, instead of following the federal mandate. “It would have been a nightmare,” Mr. Stanton said.

Mr. Stanton has spent most of his career as a top Washington lobbyist for the automotive industry. Yet what he’s seen in the past few weeks is unlike anything he’s ever witnessed: In a town where powerful Michigan senators should be going toe-to-toe with their influential California counterparts (not to mention with the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi), he nevertheless saw consensus. “Look, everyone knew we were going to get higher fuel standards with the president’s ’20 in 10′ commitment,” Mr. Stanton said. “But we all worried where we were going to get those standards from.” Industry isn’t accustomed to hailing developments wrought by a strong federal government. In this case, Detroit, Tokyo, and Frankfurt will come to see the advantages of dealing with a sensible, gradual, national fuel economy standard.

Now for the fun parts: A single set of national guidelines means we all face them together, like the 36 billion-gallon bio-fuel mandate. By law, this amount of ethanol will have to be blended into the nation’s fuels by 2022.

Reaching a 35 mile-a-gallon fleet average in 12 years will be, well, interesting to watch. Mr. Stanton said that the automakers he represents are up to the challenge. “At the end of the day, you have to present people with vehicles that they want to buy,” he said. “The next decade is going to be exciting.”

Mr. Akasie is the Motoring columnist of The New York Sun.