This op-ed originally ran in The Hill.
Federal laws and regulations play a crucial role determining the quality of our air, water, and natural resources. Well-researched and scientifically supported rules can bring enormous benefits to the American people, but regulatory rollbacks for little more than deregulation's sake can cause great harm.
One example of the potential damage that a poorly crafted regulation may cause is the new proposal by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to roll back a requirement that automobile manufacturers improve vehicle fuel efficiency in the first half of the 2020s. With the rise of wind and solar energy, and the ongoing shift from coal-fired to natural-gas-fired power plants, motor vehicles are now the leading U.S. source of the greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change — along with other harmful air pollutants. If left in place, the current requirements would significantly reduce those harmful emissions, protecting public health while making disastrous sea level rise less likely. If reversed, the opposite would occur.
The Trump administration has also proposed to revoke a waiver granted by EPA to the state of California that allows it to set stricter vehicle emission standards. The Clean Air Act specifically provides for such waivers because parts of the state are particularly burdened by air pollution. California has consistently sought and been granted such waivers, setting relatively strict requirements for vehicle pollution. The law also allows other states to adopt California’s standards, and 12 states and the District of Columbia have done so, thus guaranteeing that cars manufactured with the California standards in mind will have a broad market.
Both of these regulatory proposals are poorly supported and of questionable legality. The Trump rollback of vehicle emission standards directly contradicts a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision, Massachusetts v. EPA, which declared that greenhouse gases are a pollutant subject to EPA regulation. The rollback proposal also conflicts with an EPA finding that greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare. Moreover, the standards were the result of a negotiation between the Obama White House and the auto industry, which is probably why there wasn’t much clamoring from Detroit for a rollback.
Read the full op-ed in The Hill.
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Joel A. Mintz | August 9, 2018
This op-ed originally ran in The Hill. Federal laws and regulations play a crucial role determining the quality of our air, water, and natural resources. Well-researched and scientifically supported rules can bring enormous benefits to the American people, but regulatory rollbacks for little more than deregulation's sake can cause great harm. One example of the […]
Daniel Farber | August 6, 2018
Cross-posted from LegalPlanet. Trump is proposing to gut CO2 standards for cars, freezing 2020 CAFE fuel-efficiency standards in place for years to come. Without the freeze, the standards would automatically ramp up. He also wants to eliminate California's ability to set its own standards, which many other states have opted to adopt. Here are seven key […]
Joel A. Mintz | August 2, 2018
This op-ed originally ran in the Miami Herald. The forced resignation of Scott Pruitt as administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) brought celebration and relief in many quarters. Pruitt was a walking scandal machine who generated an endless stream of headlines about spending abuses, cozy relationships with industry lobbyists, first-class travel at government […]
Wendy Wagner | August 1, 2018
Originally published on The Regulatory Review. Reprinted with permission. In a previous essay, we critiqued the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) recently proposed transparency rule, arguing that the proposal conflicts with best scientific practices and would further erode the EPA’s ability to do its job. According to supporters, the central goal of the proposed rule is […]
Matt Shudtz | August 1, 2018
Andrew Wheeler will be on the hot seat today when he heads to Capitol Hill for his first appearance before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee as Acting Administrator of the EPA. Senators initially scheduled the hearing when Scott Pruitt was Administrator and his ethical problems had reached such epic proportions that his party's […]
Lisa Heinzerling | July 31, 2018
Originally published on The Regulatory Review. Reprinted with permission. In the fitting last act of his corrupt reign as the Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Scott Pruitt handed a gift to companies who profit from producing cheaper trucks by dispensing with modern pollution control equipment. He arranged for political appointees at EPA to […]
Joel A. Mintz | July 31, 2018
This op-ed originally ran in the South Florida Sun Sentinel. Recent events have underscored the vital importance of effective environmental regulation for Floridians. Blue green algae — apparently caused by releases of contaminated water from Lake Okeechobee — has blanketed significant portions of our state’s east and west coasts, causing major economic losses and posing a […]
Thomas McGarity | July 30, 2018
This commentary was originally published by The American Prospect. Most of us take for granted the federal regulations that make our air cleaner, our drinking water purer, our food, highways, and workplaces safer, and our economic transactions less vulnerable to fraud and abuse. And few of us realize the extent to which those protections are […]
Evan Isaacson | July 27, 2018
Today, the Mid-Atlantic Regional Office of the Environmental Protection Agency officially released its assessment of Chesapeake Bay restoration progress. This marked the formal conclusion of the multi-year process known as the "midpoint assessment" for the Chesapeake's cleanup plan.