Matt Doll, Minnesota Environmental Partnership
In February, Trump Administration’s Environmental Protection Agency announced a final rule repealing two key regulatory pillars of climate policy: the 2009 finding that greenhouse gas pollution endangers public health through its impact on climate change, and the finding that emissions from new vehicles contribute to that pollution. As the transportation sector is the largest source of climate pollution in both the United States and Minnesota, this decision carries immense weight for our climate action efforts.
Beyond simple denial of climate science, the EPA’s dubious rationale is that repealing these findings will save Americans money on new vehicles. (Tariffs and other trade barriers are a larger contributor to new vehicle costs.)
Environmental groups, including MEP, have responded: we’re taking the EPA to court.
On April 8th, MEP was among the organizations from multiple states – represented by our member group Environmental Law & Policy Center – that filed suit against this repeal. We argue that this repeal is unlawful and based on faulty science.
The endangerment finding rests on the Clean Air Act, which requires the EPA to regulate pollutants that harm human health. The Supreme Court found in 2007 that greenhouse gases qualify as pollutants and left it to the EPA to determine if they harm human health.
The health impacts of greenhouse gas emissions are easy to identify using legitimate science. Minnesotans are well aware of the hazards of wildfire smoke, which is increasingly common with hotter temperatures and poses especially dire health risks to children and people with lung conditions. So does ground-level ozone, which tends to be exacerbated by heat waves. Increasingly common hurricanes and floods also put humans at risk. And disease-carrying species like ticks and mosquitos are moving northward and affecting us over longer periods as winters get shorter.
In order to justify its politically-motivated repeal of the endangerment finding and the vehicle rules that rest on it, the EPA used a hastily-written report riddled with holes and obfuscation. No credible scientific authority has endorsed it. This is unsurprising given other recent Trump Administration moves to cancel or bury federal climate change research.
The Administration’s opinions on climate change do not change the facts: Greenhouse gases cause climate change, and their costs are mounting up. The estimated cost of climate-related disasters in the United States as of last December is $3.1 trillion. That’s the proverbial tip of the iceberg. According to a recent state report, Minnesota alone will soon face tens of billion dollars in annual costs due to climate disruptions.
The joint lawsuit aims to compel the EPA to reverse its decision and stick to law and science for policy making on this issue. If successful, it will help put the nation’s auto sector back on track to reduce climate emissions and encourage the growing electric vehicle sector. While the endangerment finding does not directly address harmful vehicle pollutants like nitrous oxide and particulates, these are also reduced by spurring electrification and lower-emitting vehicles.
The Clean Air Act is not the Clean Air Suggestion. MEP and our allies in other states know that past legal decisions and climate science are on our side. We hope to see the courts swiftly affirm that the EPA has the authority and the obligation to protect our future and cut down on the vehicle emissions heating our planet.