Send more pollution
The job of the Environmental Protection Agency is, oddly enough, to protect the environment, but its next move is going to be telling California it can’t have stricter admission standards than the rest of the country. Must be dirtier! Is the law!
The Trump administration will announce as early as Wednesday it is revoking California’s authority to set its own greenhouse gas and vehicle fuel efficiency standards and barring all states from setting such rules, two auto industry officials said on Tuesday.
The move is sure to spark legal challenges over issues including states’ rights and climate change that administration officials say could ultimately be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Trump met with senior officials last Thursday and agreed to greenlight the plan to bar California from setting tailpipe emission standards or requiring zero emission vehicles, Reuters reported last week.
No cleaner air for you! Join the rest of us in the muck, it’s only fair!
The administration plans to issue separate rules rolling back Obama-era fuel economy requirements in the coming weeks. A formal announcement is tentatively set for Wednesday at the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) headquarters and automakers and dealers have been invited to attend, industry officials said.
Must use more fuel instead of less! Must hasten climate change instead of trying to slow it.
California has vowed to challenge the Trump administration effort, arguing that the United States has an obligation to protect the environment for future generations. “We’ll see you in court if you stand in our way,” California Attorney General Xavier Becerra said.
Some senior administration officials believe provoking a court battle with California gives them a historic chance to displace the state from vehicle emissions oversight and could give the Supreme Court the chance to revisit a landmark 5-4 2007 decision that found the EPA has the legal authority to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from vehicles.
Always do the wrong thing. It’s what made America great.
I suspect (and hope) that this will not stick – mandatory maximum pollution is in the public good, but mandatory minimum pollution is not. Not to mention the legality of forcing a company to create a worse (and therefore probably less valuable) seems a stretch, even with a conservative court system.
Dubya tried to force California to stay with federal guidelines, too. I don’t know how that came out, or even if it had finished before he left office.
Emission standards?