The Trump administration Overturned a foundational scientific decision that gave governments the ability to control climate-warming pollution. The move has been described as a gift to “billionaire polluters” at the expense of Americans’ health.
A risk finding that the accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere harms public health and welfare has allowed the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) since 2009 to limit heat-trapping pollution from vehicles, power plants and other industrial sources.
Donald Trump called the move “the single largest deregulation in American history.”
“It’s huge if you’re in the environment,” he told reporters Thursday. “It’s as big as it gets.”
The move comes as part of Trump’s larger anti-environmental push, which has seen him roll back pollution regulations and boost oil and gas production.
Barack Obama on Social Media Said Repeal would leave Americans “less safe, less healthy and less able to fight climate change – all of which the fossil fuel industry can make even more money”.
Former Secretary of State John Kerry called the new rule “un-American.”
“Repealing dangerous exploration would take the Orwellian regime to new heights and invite enormous damage to people and property around the world,” said Kerry, who also served as Joe Biden’s climate ambassador. “Ignoring the warning signs will not stop the storm. It will only put more Americans directly in its path.”
The final rule eliminates the government’s ability to impose requirements to track, report and limit climate-warming pollution from cars and trucks. Transportation is the largest source of air pollution in the US.
It would not apply to regulations on fixed sources of emissions, such as power plants and fossil fuel infrastructure, which are regulated under a separate section of the Clean Air Act, but it would open the door to ending those standards as well.
There is Trump’s EPA Separately proposed to find the emissions Power plants do not “contribute significantly to hazardous air pollution” and therefore should not be regulated. Joseph Goffman, who served as EPA air chief under Joe Biden, hoped the agency would apply their vehicle-focused arguments to fixed pollutants to kill the dangerous pursuit of all sources of greenhouse gas emissions.
“Instead of the whole house of cards of all EPA climate regulation collapsing at once today, it’s like a row of dominoes falling,” said Goffman, who helped write and implement the Clean Air Act and worked directly on the hazard discovery.
Environmental advocates denounced the move as illegal. Several green groups have vowed to take the EPA to court over the rollback State of California.
“If this reckless decision survives legal challenges, it will lead to more deadly wildfires, more severe heat deaths, more climate-driven floods and droughts, and greater threats to communities across the country — while the EPA discards an enormous amount of science that has protected public health for decades,” California Governor Gavin Newsom said in a statement.
The move is “the most aggressive, brutal dismantling of public health protections in the agency’s 55-year history,” said Dominique Browning, director and co-founder of the environmental advocacy group Mom’s Clean Air Force.
in a press releaseEPA said this action Protects the US $1.3tn, but Trump said Thursday that the move would “save American consumers trillions of dollars.”
The EPA administrator, Lee Zeldin, said the Obama and Biden administrations used the dangerous finding to “bring into existence a left-wing wish list of costly climate policies.”
“Who paid the highest price? Hard-working families, small businesses, millions of Americans who want a reliable, affordable car to get to work or take their kids to school or to church on Sunday,” he said.
While the rollback may save some corporations money, experts note that it will take a heavy toll on the well-being and pocketbooks of ordinary Americans.
one Analysis From the green group Environmental Defense Fund, Trump’s proposal to roll back motor vehicle standards combined with a complete repeal of the dangerous pursuit would result in 18 billion tons of planet-warming pollution by 2055 — the same as world-leading China’s annual emissions — and Duty up to $4.7tn can die Among the additional costs associated with harmful weather and air pollution at that time.
Zeldin submitted the annulment of the legal decision for A White House review last month. In July, he officially announced the plans Cancel the searchbacking the proposal with a widely criticized Energy Department report questioning climate science.
The agency received half a million comments on the proposal. Last month, a federal judge A July Department of Energy report said created illegally.
In rescinding the hazardous determination, the EPA stated that the Clean Air Act was intended only to regulate pollution “that would harm health or the environment through local and regional exposure”. But by trapping heat in the atmosphere, there is scientific consensus that greenhouse gas emissions are exacerbating dangerous extreme weather events. Diseases spread rapidlyand worse illnesses from allergies Lung disease.
Trump described the finding as “the legal foundation for the Green New Scam,” which he noted “has been used by the Obama and Biden administrations to destroy countless jobs.”
But the new rule could have devastating consequences for working-class Americans, said Jason Walsh, executive director of the BlueGreen Alliance, a coalition of labor unions and environmental groups.
“Billionaires like Donald Trump won’t feel the devastation of climate change,” he said. “Working people do.”
The rollback comes after a month Trump administration A foundation to tackle the climate crisis, as well as the world’s leading organization of climate scientists, has announced it will withdraw the US from a UN treaty. In the past year, Zeldin has also launched an all-out assault on climate, air, water and chemical defenses. EPA also removed key climate-focused science and data from its webpages.
“It’s all part of the Trump administration’s authoritarian playbook, replacing facts with propaganda, enriching some and harming the rest,” said Rachel Cletus, senior policy director of the climate and energy program at the science advocacy group Union of Concerned Scientists. “Administrator Zeldin has completely abdicated EPA’s responsibility to protect our health and environment.”
EPA determined that withdrawing the risk determination would save the US billions annually. But the agency’s analysis doesn’t take into account the money and lives saved by environmental and public-health protections, which experts say would eliminate the change.
Alex Witt, senior adviser at the green advocacy group Climate Power, said: “Zeldin and Trump are telling our families: We’re going to make you sick and see your health care costs skyrocket while oil and gas CEOs profit.”
“This decision makes it clear that Trump is willing to make our families sicker and less safe to benefit a few billionaire polluters,” Witt said.
Some industry groups were unwilling to support a full rollback of the dangerous finding. The American Petroleum Institutethe top US oil lobby group, said last month it supported ending hazardous exploration for vehicles, but not for stationary sources of pollution such as power plants.
