EPA Announces Failure to Do Its One Job to Address Dangerous Pollution

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Today, the EPA claimed it was shifting its Clean Air Act enforcement away from power plants to focus on reducing transportation pollution from car and trucks.

Ironically, former coal lobbyist and acting EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler has recently proposed a rollback of the Clean Power Plan, the first-ever standards to reduce carbon pollution from coal-fired power plants, which would have cut carbon pollution by 32 percent, prevented 90,000 asthma attacks per year, and avoided 3,200 premature deaths per year by 2030. Wheeler then announced he wanted to replace that plan with one that would actually increase pollution and preventable deaths in order to help billionaire coal industry executives avoid cutting down on their emissions.

At the same time, Wheeler’s EPA also plans to roll back the widely popular Clean Car Standards this year, which would reduce carbon pollution by 6 billion tons, save consumers $1.7 trillion dollars in fuel costs, and reduce oil consumption by up to 4 million barrels every day. By the EPA’s own analysis, the alternate proposed plan would increase pollution, cause hundreds of fatalities a year, and sicken thousands.

In response, Sierra Club’s Legislative Director Melinda Pierce released the following statement: 

“There’s nothing more ironic and dishonest than hearing the EPA talk about wiping its hands of safeguarding communities from power sector pollution to focus on transportation pollution when the agency under Wheeler is failing to address either. If Wheeler had any interest other than pleasing his former clients in the fossil fuel industry, his EPA would be strengthening vital safeguards that keep emissions in check, not rolling them back.”