On Monday, Trump and his band of merry demons announced that they would be attacking the good work done under the Obama administration and in California by overriding the state’s higher emissions standards. The Los Angeles Times explains that this comes in tandem with Trump’s announcement that they plan on opening up public lands for drilling and other fossil-fuel interests.
"Cooperative federalism doesn't mean that one state can dictate standards for the rest of the country," Environmental Protection Agency chief Scott Pruitt said in a statement, which added that California's authority to set its own emissions standards was "being reexamined."
"EPA will set a national standard for greenhouse gas emissions that allows auto manufacturers to make cars that people both want and can afford — while still expanding environmental and safety benefits of newer cars," Pruitt said.
This is just a symptom of one of the many reasons scientists have been forced out and resigned their positions from Scott Pruitt’s EPA. The guy rents out a lobbyist’s condo in Washington, D.C., for Christ’s sake. The definition of “swamp” is Scott Pruitt. He’s corrupt, in the pocket of big business considerations, whose decisions fly directly in the face of his agency’s purported directives. Saying that Scott Pruitt is the fox guarding the henhouse is offensive to foxes and hens.
As the Pacific Standard reports, the standard set by California—home to over a third of the country’s manufactured cars—was part of a campaign to bring down the state’s carbon emissions 40 percent over the next 15 years. Under the Clean Air Act, California was the only state that could independently adopt its own emissions standards.
No other state can ask for a waiver, but they can all adopt California's stricter rule, and at least 15 states have done so, including Pennsylvania, Georgia, and the New York metropolitan area. In effect, the California standards now apply to more than 40 percent of the population in the U.S.
The EPA first set fuel efficiency standards in the 1970s to reduce the nation's reliance on foreign oil, after the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries oil crisis sent the price per barrel skyrocketing. In 2012, the EPA bolstered the standards, requiring all new fleets of vehicles to get 54.5 miles per gallon, on average, by 2025—a threshold fewer than 4 percent of cars on the road today would meet. Experts estimated that the new rule would save between five and six billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions by 2025.
Pruitt’s argument is that the standards were set “politically,” and needed to be given more research. This is a guy who wants to pretend that climate change isn’t happening because he hopes to be dead and in heaven by the time our earth is completely on fire. California is fighting back, as it should since California is home to literally the most Americans in the country.
Pruitt's legal ability to revoke California's authority is uncertain and any such move could be tied up in court for years. In the meantime, auto companies would be faced with the complicated and costly prospect of building and selling two different sets of cars — one for California and the other states that follow its standards, and one for the rest of the country.
The car companies that wanted weakened standards are half freaking out right now because this battle could lead to manufacturers having to build two different kinds of cars, to sell in California and the rest of the country. This wouldn’t save car companies any of the money they’ve been hoping to make at the cost of American’s lung health.
Pruitt says he's not interested in making such concessions, and California officials say they see no reason to go along with his rollback. The tone between state air regulators and the EPA chief has grown increasingly tense.
That’s because Scott Pruitt thinks God told him to set the world on fire. The Republican talking point is that this will help grow our automobile manufacturing industry, while recent studies show that California’s economy has continued to grow while still working to cut emissions. The future is not oil for human use. Our earth and its inhabitants lives began and will end around the sun—if we are lucky.