Trump's EPA Head Rolls Back Tailpipe Emissions Standards
by John Lawrence, May 2, 2018
Just what the climate needs now - more carbon dioxide coming out of the tailpipes of cars. More pollution, more global warming. Scot Pruitt, Trump's head of the Environmental Protection Agency, is protecting the environment by mandating that more tailpipe emissions go into it. That means that cars will be sold with lower mileage standards, and you will buy more gas to keep them running. But who cares as long as the oil and gas companies are in a position to sell more gas and make more money. The US is the biggest climate polluter in history. It set the stage for polluting even more when Trump walked away from the Paris accords on climate change. Now they are reducing tailpipe emissions standards so car makers can relax and not have to engineer cars that get better gas mileage.
California is fighting back. Long a leader in reducing atmospheric carbon dioxide pollution, California is suing the Trump administration which insists that California lower its emissions standards according to Pruitt's dictates. The New York Times put it this way:
California and a coalition of 16 other states and the District of Columbia sued the Trump administration on Tuesday over its plan to roll back greenhouse gas emissions standards for cars, trucks and S.U.V.s.
The move comes days after reports that the Environmental Protection Agency and Transportation Department plan to dramatically weaken federal auto emissions rules. California, which holds a waiver under the Clean Air Act that allows it to set its own standards for vehicle exhaust pollution, has pledged to stick with stricter Obama-era targets.
So the Trump administration which formally doesn't believe in global warming is insisting that all the states follow its dictates and pollute more. Of course states rights, which are always insisted upon by Red states, don't figure here. They are only taken seriously when the Red states want to do something which is counter to a Democratic administration. California has always wanted to have stricter rules regarding auto emissions standards. The Obama administration brought Federal guidelines into compliance with California's higher standards only to have Trump and Pruitt mandate that all the states including California pollute more. “My message to the E.P.A. and administrator Pruitt is simple: Do your job. Regulate carbon pollution from vehicles, defend the clean car standards, don’t tear them up,” Xavier Becerra, California’s attorney general, said in a press conference.
California wants to get 5 million zero-emissions vehicles on the road by 2030. It is doing all it can to prevent a global warming crisis. The Trump administration wants to hasten that crisis. It doesn't care about global warming. In fact it could care less. If California outlaws the sale of gas guzzlers in the state, will Californians have to go out of state to buy their SUVs. Stay tuned.
