This week, possibly today, the Trump regime will announce several more actions in its rotten plan to wreck the Environmental Protection Agency, harm people with more pollution, peel more dollars from their wallets, add to greenhouse gas emissions that are driving climate change, and stop 13 other states from enforcing vehicle emissions standards that are stricter than those imposed nationwide by the federal government. Not only would these myopic moves postpone the day when coal no longer is used to generate electricity, they would also reduce the impetus of manufacturers to make electric cars.
Unless the resistance can stop it with protests, lobbying and litigation, this retreat from several policies established or expanded under President Obama will cause hideous—and lethal—damage to the environment. All of it done at the behest of automobile manufacturers, the Kochs and other elements of the fossil-fuel industry to whom the bottom line is more important than the health of humans and the planet.
Three actions are coming: 1) disemboweling the EPA’s Clean Power Plan designed to cut carbon pollution from burning coal, 2) rolling back fuel-efficiency standards for cars and thus increasing their tailpipe emissions, and 3) withdrawing a waiver that allows California and other states that have joined it to enforce stricter auto emissions standards than the federal government imposes.
The Clean Power Plan established 19 months ago was painstakingly developed by the Environmental Protection Agency to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, particle pollution, sulfur dioxide, and nitrogen oxides from electricity-generating plants.
By 2030, according to the EPA, the CPP would cut carbon pollution from those plants by about 30 percent over 2005 levels and reduce pollutants that contribute to unhealthy soot and smog by more than 25 percent. The benefits? Avoiding 2,700 to 6,600 annual deaths and 140,000 to 150,000 asthma attacks in children. Plus up to $93 billion a year in economic activity.
The CPP drew sharp attacks when it was announced. Many industrialists, their climate science-denying shills in academia, and federal and state lawmakers disapproved when environmental advocates labeled carbon dioxide emissions “pollution.” As if it doesn’t truly exist because it’s invisible.
In fact, a decade ago the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Massachusetts v. EPA that greenhouse gases do constitute pollution, and as such, the EPA is required by the Clean Air Act to restrict it. That ruling has not stopped 27 states from joining in a lawsuit to block the feds from implementing the CPP.
Since the plan’s greatest impact would be felt by coal extractors and utilities burning coal to generate electricity, Pr*sident Trump no doubt will praise himself with one of his patented tweets for keeping his promise to bring back coal jobs, a dubious prospect given that ever-cheaper renewable energy sources and natural gas are replacing coal-burners across the country, and states are boosting their renewables goals for 25-30 years from now as high as 100 percent.
But reality for the Trump regime is whatever the fossil-fuel barons say it is. As has long been known by those paying attention, those barons have for more than 25 years paid people to fabricate the climate science-denying nonsense believed by a big hunk of Americans, including the pr*sident and most of his cabinet.
That twisted viewpoint has apparently led Trump to approve another of the actions reportedly being announced this week: a rollback of the enhanced Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) regulations that came into force in 2012. CAFE regulations first came into being 42 years ago because of the 1973-74 oil embargo. The standards—jointly approved by the EPA and the Tranportation Department, pushed fuel economy in cars from an average of 18 miles per gallon in 1978 to 27.5 mpg in 1985. And there they got stuck for 26 years.
President Obama changed that. He prodded the major U.S. car manufacturers to get moving on efficiency again. After much presidential jawboning and nudging, they agreed, though reluctantly, to double efficiency, taking the CAFE standards to 54.5 mpg for passenger cars by 2025, with boosts for light trucks as well. Currently, the average for new model cars is 36-37 mpg. Obama’s doubling of fuel efficiency standards was the biggest concrete step the nation ever took to reduce oil dependency and carbon pollution.
Making cars more efficient means fewer tailpipe emissions. That matters a great deal because transportation is second only to power generation as a greenhouse gas emitter, according to the Energy Information Administration. When the new CAFE standards were announced six years ago, the EPA said transportation emissions represented about a third of all such emissions, with passenger cars and light trucks representing 60 percent of that, or about one-fifth of total greenhouse gas emissions.
But as Coral Davenport reported last Friday, a coalition of 17 of the largest car sellers in the nation sent letters to EPA chief Scott Pruitt asking him to revisit the tailpipe emissions rule. They said it’s too hard technically for them to comply with the rule’s ultimate efficiency and emissions goals and will cost too much money. Both of these complaints are a familiar cry from an industry that in the past objected to installing safety belts and airbags in every car.
Manufacturers know full well that Pruitt is one of them. He has collaborated with companies in several lawsuits against the EPA and has in the past hinted that he favors abolishing the agency altogether. He’s about as deep into the pocket of the oil industry as a politician can get before leaving public office and is one of the four Trump cabinet officers who lied under oath during their confirmation hearings.
During those hearings by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, the issue of state standards arose. Currently, a waiver is required to allow California and the states that follow its lead to impose stricter rules than the federal government has on the books. Pruitt said he would begin a review of the CAFE standards and of the waivers granted to California. Newly elected California Sen. Kamala Harris saw that as a problem and asked him if he planned to uphold the waivers:
“That is a review process that will be conducted... ”
“What is your intention?” Harris shot back, interrupting him.
“I wouldn’t know without going through the process and would not want to presume the outcome,” Pruitt replied.
Uh-huh. Three weeks after his confirmation, the review process is over and the totally expected outcome is about to be unveiled.
“The rest of the world is moving forward with electric cars. If the Trump administration goes backward, the U.S. won’t be able to compete globally,” said Margo T. Oge, a former senior E.P.A. official and the author of “Driving the Future: Combating Climate Change With Cleaner, Smarter Cars.”
“This means they’ll just keep polluting,” said S. William Becker, the executive director of the National Association of Clean Air Agencies. He also predicted that “if this administration goes after the California waiver, there will be an all-out brawl between Trump and California and the other states that will defend its program.”
The Clean Power Plan can’t be erased with the stroke of a pen. The dismantling will take a while, and that means there may be a chance to keep it from destruction—assuming the federal courts don’t toss it out. But the CAFE standards and the waivers for state exemptions from federal supremacy on emissions rules can be ended simply by issuing new efficiency standards within a year of withdrawing the old ones.
Even if Donald Trump doesn’t manage to finish his term as president, the amount of damage caused by him and the Republicans who love what he is doing will take years to repair.