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solarbirdThey never stop trying to hurt people.
Ever.
----- 1 -----
'We Knew They Had Cooked the Books'
The Trump administration’s attempt to kill one of America’s strongest climate policies has been a complete debacle.
Story by Robinson Meyer
February 12, 2020
[EDITOR: This story from February is being posted today because the policy changes described in it go into effect today.]
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2020/02/an-inside-account-of-trumps-fuel-economy-debacle/606346/
ANN ARBOR, Mich.—On a drizzly day in January 2018, Jeff Alson, an engineer at the Environmental Protection Agency’s motor-vehicles office, gathered with his colleagues to make a video call to Washington, D.C.
They had made the same call dozens of times before. For nearly a decade, the EPA team had worked closely with another group of engineers in the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA, pronounced nits-uh) to write the federal tailpipe-pollution standards, one of the most consequential climate protections in American history. The two teams had done virtually all the technical research—testing engines in a lab, interviewing scientists and automakers, and overseeing complex economic simulations—underpinning the rules, which have applied to every new car and light truck, including SUVs and vans, sold in the United States since 2012.
Their collaboration was historic. Even as SUVs, crossovers, and pickups have gobbled up the new-car market, the rules have pushed the average fuel economy—the distance a vehicle can travel per gallon of gas—to record highs. They have saved Americans $500 billion at the pump, according to the nonpartisan Consumer Federation of America, and kept hundreds of millions of tons of carbon pollution out of the air. So as the call connected, Alson and the other EPA engineers thought it was time to get back to work. Donald Trump had recently ordered a review of the rules.
Speaking from Washington, James Tamm, the NHTSA fuel-economy chief, greeted the EPA team, then put a spreadsheet on-screen. It showed an analysis of the tailpipe rules’ estimated costs and benefits. Alson had worked on this kind of study so many times that he could recall some of the key numbers “by heart,” he later told me.
Yet as Alson looked closer, he realized that this study was like none he had seen before. For years, both NHTSA and the EPA had found that the tailpipe rules saved lives during car accidents because they reduced the weight—and, with it, the lethality—of the heaviest SUVs. In 2015, an outside panel of experts concurred with them.
But this new study asserted the opposite: The Obama-era rules, it claimed, killed almost 1,000 people a year.
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U.S. to Announce Rollback of Auto Pollution Rules, a Key Effort to Fight Climate Change
Coral Davenport
By Coral Davenport
Ms. Davenport has been covering federal climate change policy since the George W. Bush administration.
March 30, 2020
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/30/climate/trump-fuel-economy.html
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is expected on Tuesday to announce its final rule to rollback Obama-era automobile fuel efficiency standards, relaxing efforts to limit climate-warming tailpipe pollution and virtually undoing the government’s biggest effort to combat climate change.
The new rule, written by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Transportation, would allow cars on American roads to emit nearly a billion tons more carbon dioxide over the lifetime of the vehicles than they would have under the Obama standards and hundreds of millions of tons more than will be emitted under standards being implemented in Europe and Asia.
Trump administration officials raced to complete the auto rule by this spring, even as the White House was consumed with responding to the coronavirus crisis. President Trump is expected to extol the rule, which will stand as one of the most consequential regulatory rollbacks of his administration, as a needed salve for an economy crippled by the pandemic.
The lower fuel-efficiency standard “is the single most important thing that the administration can do to fulfill President Trump’s campaign promise of reforming the regulatory state, and to undo the impact that the previous administration has had on the economy,” said Thomas J. Pyle, the president of the Institute for Energy Research, an organization that supports the use of fossil fuels.
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Idaho governor signs GOP’s anti-transgender bills, setting up likely legal challenges
By Cynthia Sewell
March 30, 2020
https://www.idahostatesman.com/news/politics-government/state-politics/article241366156.html
Idaho Gov. Brad Little has signed into law two anti-transgender bills.
One bill would ban transgender girls and women from participating in sports that align with their gender identity. The other bill would make it illegal for transgender people to change gender markers on their Idaho birth certificates.
Little signed the bills Monday afternoon. He didn’t issue signing statements on either bill.
COSTLY COURT CHALLENGES
The bills’ next likely stop will be the courts for a lengthy and expensive legal battle. Republican lawmakers passed both bills despite legal warnings of their unconstitutionality.
Ever.
- We Knew They Had Cooked the Books: The Trump administration’s attempt to kill one of America’s strongest climate policies has been a complete debacle.
- U.S. to Announce Rollback of Auto Pollution Rules, a Key Effort to Fight Climate Change
- Idaho governor signs GOP’s anti-transgender bills, setting up likely legal challenges
----- 1 -----
'We Knew They Had Cooked the Books'
The Trump administration’s attempt to kill one of America’s strongest climate policies has been a complete debacle.
Story by Robinson Meyer
February 12, 2020
[EDITOR: This story from February is being posted today because the policy changes described in it go into effect today.]
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2020/02/an-inside-account-of-trumps-fuel-economy-debacle/606346/
ANN ARBOR, Mich.—On a drizzly day in January 2018, Jeff Alson, an engineer at the Environmental Protection Agency’s motor-vehicles office, gathered with his colleagues to make a video call to Washington, D.C.
They had made the same call dozens of times before. For nearly a decade, the EPA team had worked closely with another group of engineers in the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA, pronounced nits-uh) to write the federal tailpipe-pollution standards, one of the most consequential climate protections in American history. The two teams had done virtually all the technical research—testing engines in a lab, interviewing scientists and automakers, and overseeing complex economic simulations—underpinning the rules, which have applied to every new car and light truck, including SUVs and vans, sold in the United States since 2012.
Their collaboration was historic. Even as SUVs, crossovers, and pickups have gobbled up the new-car market, the rules have pushed the average fuel economy—the distance a vehicle can travel per gallon of gas—to record highs. They have saved Americans $500 billion at the pump, according to the nonpartisan Consumer Federation of America, and kept hundreds of millions of tons of carbon pollution out of the air. So as the call connected, Alson and the other EPA engineers thought it was time to get back to work. Donald Trump had recently ordered a review of the rules.
Speaking from Washington, James Tamm, the NHTSA fuel-economy chief, greeted the EPA team, then put a spreadsheet on-screen. It showed an analysis of the tailpipe rules’ estimated costs and benefits. Alson had worked on this kind of study so many times that he could recall some of the key numbers “by heart,” he later told me.
Yet as Alson looked closer, he realized that this study was like none he had seen before. For years, both NHTSA and the EPA had found that the tailpipe rules saved lives during car accidents because they reduced the weight—and, with it, the lethality—of the heaviest SUVs. In 2015, an outside panel of experts concurred with them.
But this new study asserted the opposite: The Obama-era rules, it claimed, killed almost 1,000 people a year.
----- 2 -----
U.S. to Announce Rollback of Auto Pollution Rules, a Key Effort to Fight Climate Change
Coral Davenport
By Coral Davenport
Ms. Davenport has been covering federal climate change policy since the George W. Bush administration.
March 30, 2020
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/30/climate/trump-fuel-economy.html
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is expected on Tuesday to announce its final rule to rollback Obama-era automobile fuel efficiency standards, relaxing efforts to limit climate-warming tailpipe pollution and virtually undoing the government’s biggest effort to combat climate change.
The new rule, written by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Transportation, would allow cars on American roads to emit nearly a billion tons more carbon dioxide over the lifetime of the vehicles than they would have under the Obama standards and hundreds of millions of tons more than will be emitted under standards being implemented in Europe and Asia.
Trump administration officials raced to complete the auto rule by this spring, even as the White House was consumed with responding to the coronavirus crisis. President Trump is expected to extol the rule, which will stand as one of the most consequential regulatory rollbacks of his administration, as a needed salve for an economy crippled by the pandemic.
The lower fuel-efficiency standard “is the single most important thing that the administration can do to fulfill President Trump’s campaign promise of reforming the regulatory state, and to undo the impact that the previous administration has had on the economy,” said Thomas J. Pyle, the president of the Institute for Energy Research, an organization that supports the use of fossil fuels.
----- 3 -----
Idaho governor signs GOP’s anti-transgender bills, setting up likely legal challenges
By Cynthia Sewell
March 30, 2020
https://www.idahostatesman.com/news/politics-government/state-politics/article241366156.html
Idaho Gov. Brad Little has signed into law two anti-transgender bills.
One bill would ban transgender girls and women from participating in sports that align with their gender identity. The other bill would make it illegal for transgender people to change gender markers on their Idaho birth certificates.
Little signed the bills Monday afternoon. He didn’t issue signing statements on either bill.
COSTLY COURT CHALLENGES
The bills’ next likely stop will be the courts for a lengthy and expensive legal battle. Republican lawmakers passed both bills despite legal warnings of their unconstitutionality.
