EPA, Trump announced ‘the single largest deregulatory action in U.S. history,’ eliminating legal underpinnings for greenhouse gas emissions standards This week, the Trump administration and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced that they would eliminate what EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin characterized as “the ‘Holy Grail’ of the ‘climate change religion.’” In a press conference Thursday, Zeldin and President Trump announced that they would eliminate “both the Obama-era 2009 Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Endangerment Finding and all subsequent federal GHG emission standards for all vehicles and engines of model years 2012 to 2027 and beyond,” a move they characterized as “the single largest deregulatory action in U.S. history.”That 2009 Endangerment Finding is a scientific determination about the hazardousness of greenhouse gas emissions. It has undergirded the legal framework for the U.S.’s climate policy and the ways in which the federal government has regulated greenhouse gas emissions from — and established emissions standards for — vehicles and fossil fuel companies since 2010 under the EPA’s authority established in the Clean Air Act.North Coast leaders respond“At its most basic level, this decision by the Trump administration is an attempt to (greenhouse) gaslight the public on the dangers imposed by climate change,” Assemblymember Chris Rogers (D-Santa Rosa) told the Times-Standard by email midday Friday. “Eliminating the endangerment finding reverses years of hard-earned progress — based on science — at a time when we are already teetering on the point of no return. This is yet another Trump policy meant to line the pockets of his friends and family members, while pushing the costs of fires, floods, and other climate disasters onto the public.”Rep. Jared Huffman (D-San Rafael), who serves as the Ranking Member of the House Natural Resources Committee, issued a statement condemning the elimination of the finding.Huffman called the decision “a bailout for Big Oil billionaires, plain and simple” and said that “Trump’s proven he’ll sell out our clean air and with it, every American, if the price is right for Big Oil.”“While families are losing their homes to wildfires, burying loved ones after catastrophic storms and watching their insurance premiums explode, the Trump administration is giving billionaire polluters a free pass to make it all worse,” Huffman’s statement reads. “Their answer is to rip up one of our most fundamental protections against climate pollution just so Big Oil can keep profiting while the planet burns.“The fossil fuel industry spent decades lying to the public, dodging accountability, and dumping the cost of climate destruction onto taxpayers. Now they’re being rewarded with a full repeal of the Endangerment Finding. Every court that reviewed this protection upheld it. The science is beyond dispute. But none of that matters to Trump when his donors come calling.”Huffman statement continues: “This will mean dirtier air, higher health care costs, higher energy costs, and undoubtedly cost American lives. It’s corruption. It’s cowardice. And it’s a betrayal of every American family who deserves clean air, a livable future and a government that doesn’t bow to oil tycoons.“There will be accountability for the climate crisis that was caused, covered up and dramatically worsened by Big Oil. But that imperative now falls to the courts, litigants, states and members of Congress with the integrity to put the interests of the public and the planet above Big Oil’s bottom line.”Keep Reading
