EPA’s Gift to Polluters will Fuel Climate Crisis and Harm Health

WASHINGTON  – In the last days of the Trump administration, the Environmental Protection Agency is expected to issue a rule today seeking to exempt some of the nation’s biggest polluters—including producers of oil and gas, chemicals, cement, steel and aluminum—from future Clean Air Act limits on their climate-changing emissions.

The rule, ostensibly applicable to power plants, in fact, would leave the current pollution standards in place. Instead, the rule would erect new obstacles to regulating any other industry, which would worsen the climate crisis and harm the health of millions of people.

The following is a statement by David Doniger, senior strategic director of the Climate & Clean Energy program at NRDC (the Natural Resources Defense Council):

“In the Trump administration’s latest midnight regulatory gift to polluters, the EPA is perverting the Clean Air Act to ensure that no industry other than the power sector ever has to cut its climate pollution. EPA cannot simply declare by fiat, contrary to the science, that every other industry is too small to matter.

“The climate crisis cannot be solved, and our most vulnerable citizens cannot be protected, unless every industry does its part to transition to clean energy and net zero emissions.”     

 

# # #

 

NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council) is an international nonprofit environmental organization with more than 3 million members and online activists. Since 1970, our lawyers, scientists, and other environmental specialists have worked to protect the world's natural resources, public health, and the environment. NRDC has offices in New York City, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Bozeman, MT, and Beijing. Visit us at www.nrdc.org and follow us on Twitter @NRDC.​

 

 

Related Press Releases