The Trump administration followed through on a move long dreaded by environmental groups and several states Thursday, publishing an official proposal to rollback Obama-era vehicle emissions standards and to revoke California's waiver to set stricter air pollution standards under the Clean Air Act, E&E News reported.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration issued the proposal that offers up a series of car rule options, but pushes capping fuel economy standards from 2021 on at around 37 miles per gallon, instead of increasing them to an average of around 54 miles per gallon by 2025 as the Obama administration proposed, The New York Times reported.The proposal also announces a public comment period on revoking California's waiver to set its own standards, which 13 other states representing close to 40 percent of the country's car market have also adopted, according to E&E News.The proposal would gut the one piece of federal policy focused on reducing climate-change causing pollution from the sector that has become the nation's chief greenhouse gas emitter, allowing vehicles to emit an additional 600 million metric tons (approximately 661 U.S. tons) of carbon dioxide by 2030, an amount equal to Canada's annual emissions, The Huffington Post reported."We are delivering on President Trump's promise to the American public that his administration would address and fix the current fuel economy and greenhouse gas emissions standards," acting EPA head Andrew Wheeler said in a statement reported by E&E News.But many would disagree that the new proposal represents a fix."It's an attack on the climate, consumers, state governments and the future viability of America's auto industry," Union of Concerned Scientists president Ken Kimmell told The Guardian. "The Trump administration has decided to force America's drivers to spend more at the gas pump, burn millions more barrels of oil, and put us on a path to greater harm from climate change."