EPA

In the ongoing saga of the Trump administration’s efforts to roll back fuel economy standards, it’s been known that automakers sought to ease the rising MPG requirements set by the Obama administration. But a new report reveals how a number of climate change deniers injected themselves into the conversation, pushing the administration to go “much further” than planned.

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The Environmental Protection Agency, failing in their sole duty to protect the environment, has moved ahead with its plans to replace the Obama-era Clean Power Plan, as EPA Administrator and former coal lobbyist Andrew Wheeler signed the final so-called “Affordable Clean Energy” rule into effect today.

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As the Environmental Protection Agency and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration prepare to unveil the planned rollback of fuel economy standards soon, major investors in auto companies are the latest group to publicly voice their concerns about the proposal.

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Automakers have sent another letter to the governments of the US and California regarding upcoming fuel economy rules, asking the EPA to stop a planned fuel economy rollback, the New York Times reports.

Currently, the EPA and DOT are finalizing a rollback of fuel economy standards, which is expected to go into place soon despite challenges by California and the 13 “CARB states” that follow California Air Resources Board rules.  If implemented, the plan would likely split the US auto market and cause nightmares for automakers – at least those that sell polluting cars.

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A new report shows air pollution is getting worse in the US, and the current EPA’s efforts to weaken emissions regulations on cars and power plants are seen as a major threat to improving the state of affairs.

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The Trump administration has “settled on the key details” of its plan to roll back fuel economy standards, according to a new report. And automakers are now preparing for a future where some states purposely follow stricter rules than others.

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Members of an Environmental Protection Agency panel “questioned” the well-established link between air pollution and premature death during a recent hearing, and one of those members has drawn criticism in the past for the funding behind his own pollution research.

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Following almost two years of negotiations with the auto industry and other stakeholders, the EPA has officially proposed to freeze fuel economy standards, which could slow down electric vehicle adoption.
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Today, in response to the myriad of self-induced scandals which have plagued him ever since he took the job, Scott Pruitt resigned his position as chief saboteur Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency.

He will be replaced by Deputy Administrator Andrew Wheeler as acting administrator, a former coal lobbyist who worked with Murray Energy CEO Bob Murray; was an aide for Jim Inhofe, the top climate science denier in the Senate; and who helped craft the Bush administration’s ironically-named “Clear Skies” initiative, an effort to destroy the Clean Air Act.

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Today, in response to the EPA’s recent rollback of agreed-upon 2022-2025 fuel efficiency standards, Gov. John Hickenlooper of Colorado issued an executive order for his state to develop a Low Emission Vehicle (LEV) standard similar to California’s current standard.  The executive order explicitly calls out California as a model, and notes the twelve other US states which have adopted similar programs.

Gov. Hickenlooper previously issued an executive order in 2017 for the state to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by at least 26% by 2025.  Today’s order is one step towards that goal.

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In the wake of the EPA’s move last month to eliminate federal fuel efficiency standards for 2022-2025 model year cars, California has filed a lawsuit against the EPA to stop the move from happening.  The lawsuit was filed today with California Governor Jerry Brown, Attorney General Xavier Becerra, and the California Air Resources Board as plaintiffs, with 17 other states joining in.

In total, the states filing the lawsuit represent 140 million Americans and about 43% of the country’s car market.

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A federal court ruled today that the Department of Transportation must implement a new, inflation-adjusted fine for failure to comply with federal fuel efficiency standards.

This ruling confirms that automakers will have to pay the full, updated fine for failing to meet efficiency standards.  The Department of Transportation’s attempted rule would have let them pay less than 40% of the legally required fine.

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Trump’s embattled EPA head Scott Pruitt has come down on the side of polluters on just about every issue that faces the US, so it is with little surprise that in a recent interview he signaled that he may try to fight back against California’s fuel economy requirements.

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In a live podcast recorded on stage at SXSW, California’s former Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger told Politico that he is in talks with several private law firms to sue the oil industry for what he calls “first degree murder.”

Schwarzenegger alleges that because the oil industry has known since 1959 about the climate and health damage their products cause, they should be held liable for that damage. “I don’t think there’s any difference,” says Schwarzenegger, “If you walk into a room and you know you’re going to kill someone, it’s first degree murder; I think it’s the same thing with the oil companies.”

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Industry pawn Scott Pruitt, posing as the administrator of the “Environmental Protection” Agency, announced yesterday that he will end implementation of the Clean Power Plan, a course of action which will cause an additional 3,600 deaths, 90,000 asthma attacks and 300,000 missed days of work or school per year, according to his agency’s own estimates. Pruitt also suggested that solar and wind subsidies should be cut, but failed to propose ending any part of the $5.3 trillion annual global subsidy received by the large, polluting fossil fuel industry which has underwritten his political career.

Pruitt’s “reasoning” for these changes is because he does not want the government to “pick winners and losers.” But, apparently, he is fine with government picking winners as long as it’s the same historically-winning fossil industry (with 4 of the top 10 companies by revenue worldwide) which has been bribing him to do their work for decades. And he’s fine with picking losers as long as it’s the industry which he continues to quixotically fight against in his quest to eliminate green energy and worsen public health. However, the only loser in this quest will be him.

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In a time where a surprising number of major automakers are announcing that they believe electric cars are the future of the auto industry, we are still seeing them complaining about, and in some cases lobbying against, the fuel emission standards.

Now trade groups representing virtually the entire auto industry are again putting pressure on U.S. regulators to weaken rules that would force them to produce more electric cars.
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The White House’s proposed EPA budget cuts nearly all of the Agency’s funding for vehicle emissions testing, as reported by Reuters.  The proposed cuts to the EPA’s budget would remove 99 percent of the agency’s $48 million in funding for vehicle testing, expecting automakers to pay increased fees to make up the difference.  But according to Margo Oge, former head of the EPA’s Office of Transportation and Air Quality, the proposed budget would require “pretty much shutting down the testing lab.”

We have a recent example of why this is a very bad idea.  In 2015, it was discovered that Volkswagen had been cheating on emissions tests in the US and Europe for years, installing cheat devices on their diesel cars to emit up to 40 times the allowable amount of some toxic pollutants. The scandal came to be known as “Dieselgate,” and a recent MIT study found that VW’s emissions cheating would likely result in 1,200 premature deaths in Europe alone.  This deceit was uncovered by a small lab in West Virginia and the data was turned over to the EPA and CARB for enforcement. Fiat Chrysler and Mitsubishi have also been implicated in similar emissions cheating schemes, and Daimler is currently under scrutiny.

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Just a few days ago we reported on the significant economic benefits the world will gain from the completion of the Paris Climate Agreement.  The Agreement, decided upon in 2015 and gradually signed and put into effect over the course of the last year, is a really big deal.  It could have been better, with more firm goals and specific milestones, but it’s a first in that it has been signed by 192 countries representing 99.21% of global CO2 emissions, pledging to keep global warming “well below 2ºC.”  The signatories to the Agreement include, most importantly, the world’s three largest emitters: the US, China, and India.

But yesterday on “This Week” with George Stephanopoulos, EPA-chief-and-oil-industry-talking-point-spouting-robot Scott Pruitt claimed that the Paris Agreement is a “bad deal” and that “China and India, the largest producers of [carbon dioxide] internationally, got away scot-free.”

The problem with that last statement is that, like much of what Pruitt says, it is demonstrably false.  And the person whose job it is to administer and implement these agreements ought to know it.

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The California Air Resources Board (CARB) voted unanimously to continue implementing higher emissions standards in their meeting on Friday.  This sets California’s clean-air agency up for a fight against the federal Environmental Protection Agency, which recently signaled that they aren’t too interested in doing their job of actually protecting the environment.

The emissions rules require automakers to average 54.5mpg (by the less stringent CAFE standard) over all new vehicles by 2025.

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Today, Scott Pruitt, the new administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency appointed by President Donald Trump, penned a new opinion piece published in USA Today. In the piece, he seemed more worried about making sure U.S. automakers don’t have to invest $200 billion in electric vehicles and more efficient cars than the impact on the environment.
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As expected for the past few weeks and after months of lobbying from automakers since Donald Trump was elected, the EPA has confirmed that they will review the fuel consumption rules and decide on whether or not to modify them by April 1, 2018.

Trump made the announcement with new EPA Chief Scott Pruitt and a handful of automotive executives, like GM CEO Mary Barra and Ford CEO Mark Fields, who have both being calling for the EPA to walk back to strict rules.
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