Outraged environmentalists plan to appeal to the Supreme Court next week, to force the EPA to act.

EPA administrator Stephen Johnson has denied California the approval it needed to impose its own, strict emissions standards. Critics responded by alleging that Johnson was not following his own staff's recommendations, but rather a directive from President Bush. It is an allegation that Johnson denies.

Now, Johnson has told Congress that he is planning a lengthy opportunity for the public to comment, before acting on a Supreme Court order to evaluate and regular emissions.

"It truly is thumbing his nose at the people of the United States and the people of the world," responded Sierra Club lawyer David Bookbinder. "Here he is, the so-called environmental leader of the richest nation on earth, the one with the greatest greenhouse gas emissions, and he's saying there's no problem and I'm not going to do a damn thing about it."

However, other groups, like the Heritage Foundation, applaud the decision to move more cautiously on this issue. Supporters believe it is important to weigh economic harm and potential benefits to the environment. "Restaurants and hotels and apartment buildings and farms that weren't subject to these kinds of tough regulations in the past, there'd be this kind of industrial strength regulations that usually only apply to power plants and factories, are applying to much smaller entities, so it would be a real regulatory Pandora's Box," claimed Heritage Foundation senior policy analyst Ben Lieberman.

KCBS' Holly Quan reports