During Pandemic EPA Aims to Hamstring Clean Air Protections

WASHINGTON  – The Environmental Protection Agency today proposed ​a new, dishonest way to calculate the costs and benefits of regulations under the Clean Air Act, in a maneuver designed to reduce EPA's ability to adopt protective clean air safeguards.

The following is a statement from John Walke, Clean Air Director at NRDC (the Natural Resources Defense Council):

“For the Trump EPA to try to undermine the benefits of clean air amid our national public health crisis is unconscionable. Our country is struggling with racial injustice and a global pandemic exacerbated by pollution. Both are hitting Black Americans and communities of color hardest.

“The EPA lacks any legal authority to launch this attack, and the authority that EPA imagines is farcical.

“The EPA should stop looking for ways to help polluters today, and hamstring President Trump’s successors tomorrow. And it should return to its core mission to protect people from pollution, all people in all communities. We will fight to ensure this dishonest, irresponsible plan never becomes law.”

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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.​