E.P.A. Inspector General to Investigate Trump’s Biggest Climate Rollback

Environmental Protection Agency, Federal Agency/Executive Branch, Office of Management and Budget (OMB), Transportation, White House

August 4, 2020

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by Coral Davenport and Lisa Friedman (New York Times) The Environmental Protection Agency’s internal watchdog said Monday it had opened an investigation into the agency’s weakening of Obama-era regulations that would have limited automobile emissions by significantly raising fuel economy standards.

The inspector general demanded that top E.P.A. officials turn over briefing materials and other documents pertaining to the regulation, which was finalized in late March as the Trump administration’s single largest rollback of federal climate change rules.

Auditors said they intended to investigate whether the Trump administration acted “consistent with requirements, including those pertaining to transparency, record-keeping, and docketing, and followed the E.P.A.’s process for developing final regulatory actions.”

The yearlong effort to write the Trump administration rule was plagued with controversy. Just weeks before the final rule was published, the administration’s own internal analyses showed that it would create a higher cost for consumers than leaving the Obama-era standard in place and would contribute to more deaths associated with lung disease by releasing more pollution into the air.

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Multiple outside economists and public health experts have questioned the administration’s justification of the rule, saying its calculations do not stand up to rigorous independent analysis and calling on the administration to make public the formulas and economic models used to reach its conclusions.

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The audit cites documents obtained and provided to investigators by Senator Tom Carper of Delaware, the ranking Democrat on the Environment and Public Works Committee.

The E.P.A. then “purposefully and potentially illegally withheld these documents from being placed into the rule-making docket,” Senator Carper said in a May letter, and later made changes to the final rule after it was signed and before it was published in the federal register.

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The new rules require fuel economy standards to rise by about 1.5 percent a year, compared to the 5 percent annual increase required by the Obama rule. READ MORE

Trump Calls New Fuel Economy Rule a Boon. Some Experts See Steep Costs. (New York Times)

U.S. to Announce Rollback of Auto Pollution Rules, a Key Effort to Fight Climate Change (New York Times)

Trump’s Path to Weaker Fuel Efficiency Rules May Lead to a Dead End (New York Times)

EPA IG Investigating Trump Team’s Clean Car Rule Replacement (Our Daily Planet)

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