enviro integrity pjt
see wehrum
PARTIC HOLO BS COX STANLEY YOUNG
https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/383661-trumps-epa-quietly-revamps-rules-for-air-pollution
the Trump administration has quietly reshaped enforcement of air pollution standards in recent months through a series of regulatory memos.
The memos are fulfilling the top wishes of industry, which has long called for changes to how the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) oversees the nation’s factories, plants and other facilities. The EPA is now allowing certain facilities to be subject to less-stringent regulations and is letting companies use friendlier math in calculating their expected emissions.
Environmentalists and public health advocates say the memos could greatly increase levels of air pollutants like mercury, benzene and nitrogen oxides. They accuse the EPA of avoiding the transparency and public input requirements that regulatory changes usually go through.
“All of these, individually and taken together, will result in more air pollution and less enforcement of the Clean Air Act,” said Paul Billings, senior vice president for advocacy at the American Lung Association.
“These were radical departures of current law when they were proposed a decade ago and they’re just as radical today,” he said, referring to the Bush-era efforts, some of which were unsuccessful, to make changes to EPA air programs.
But for the EPA and its supporters, the memos simply bring the agency back to what the relevant laws and regulations are meant to be.
“They address specific concerns that people have had for years, and just make it much simpler for people to comply — especially for existing [facilities] — to make sure they can maintain their plants and replace worn-out components and those types of things, without the threat of enforcement litigation,” saidJeff Holmstead, a former head of the EPA’s air pollution office under the George W. Bush administration who now represents regulated companies at the law and lobbying firm Bracewell.
Bill Wehrum, head of the air office under EPA chief Scott Pruitt, wrote two of the three EPA memos. He recused himself from the third memo, which Pruitt wrote.
The first memo, issued in December, states that the EPA will no longer “second guess” companies’ calculations of their expected pollution outputafter certain big projects under what is known as New Source Review. Under that program, the EPA reviews the changes made to a facility to decide whether they need to go through the same process as if the facility were newly built.
The December memo effectively means the EPA will usually not take action against a company for its calculations if they turn out to be wrong.
The second memo, issued in January, repeals a Clinton-era policy known as “once in, always in.” Under the previous policy, facilities could never be considered “minor” sources of hazardous pollution if they were already considered “major” sources, and subject to much stricter rules.
Now, facilities can be regulated as “minor” if their emissions drop enough.
The third memo allows companies to use a procedure known as “project netting” when applying for permits for major projects under the New Source Review program. That means companies can use a more industry-friendly emissions calculation when they argue that a particular project would reduce emissions.
President Trump added to the memos last week, signing one himself that formally asks the EPA to use more industry-friendly practices in enforcing the National Ambient Air Quality Standards program, a key Clean Air Act program for air quality nationwide.
John Walke, director for clean air at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said the EPA is working to implement the policies the Bush administration failed to finish.
“I think Mr. Wehrum has decided this is likely a one-term administration and he’s going to devote his full resources to rolling back clean air, climate and public health protections in the time available to him,” Walke said.
“The most expedient and hasty way to accomplish those rollbacks is through the regular guidance documents that we have seen so far from EPA,” he said. “Rulemakings take time, they require public notice and input and hearings, and Mr. Wehrum and Mr. Pruitt plainly have no patience for those tedious fodders.”
Walke said that, taken together, the memos could allow polluting facilities to greatly increase their emissions.
The EPA didn’t respond to requests for comment.
The focus among the memos for environmental and health advocates is the one repealing the “once in, always in” policy, and letting “major” pollution sources reduce their emissions and be regulated as “minor” ones.
A coalition of environmental groups sued the EPA to stop the policy change, arguing that it should have gone through the full regulatory process, including analysis of its environmental impact and an opportunity for public comment.Democratic states joined in with their own lawsuit.
“Instead of prioritizing the health of hard-working Americans, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt wants to let major polluters off the hook. That is unconscionable, and it is illegal,” said California Attorney General Xavier Becerra (D).
“If the ‘Once In, Always In’ policy is rescinded, children in California and around the country — particularly those who must live near the polluting plant or factory — may grow up in an environment with tons of additional hazardous pollutants in the air they breathe. California will not allow that to happen,” Becerra said.
Two environmental groups opposed to the EPA’s move have put out recent analyses of the change, focused on specific areas of the country.
TheEnvironmental Integrity Project looked at 12 industrial plants in the Midwest and concluded they could increase their pollution to 540,000 pounds annually, a fourfold growth.
The Environmental Defense Fund looked at the Houston area, and said that 18 facilities there could increase their emissions to 900,000 pounds a year, two and a half times current levels.
Holmstead said opponents of the Trump administration’s policy are unlikely to prevail. The Supreme Court ruled in the 2015 Perez v. Mortgage Bankers Association case that federal agencies can repeal policy memos with other policy memos and don’t have to go through the full regulatory process to do so.
“I think the environmental groups are going to have a real uphill battle trying to get through court that this is somehow improper,” he said. “That really does fly in the face of the Perez decision.”
As for the increase in emissions, Holmstead said environmentalists are wrong. In many cases, the new policies will allow facilities to carry out projects that reduce emissions, or simply operate under a lower paperwork burden.
“They have yet to come up with any real-world examples of how that might happen,” Holmstead said of the scenarios in which pollution might increase. “These reforms are not going to lead to pollution increases.
“I don’t think that there will be a meaningful impact one way or another.”
oops, legit ~ wehrum
off
UR MISSION
The Environmental Integrity Project is a non-profit, nonpartisan organization that empowers communities and protects public health and the environment by investigating polluters, holding them accountable under the law, and strengthening public policy.
INTEGRITY IS OUR MIDDLE NAME
We understand that details are everything, and EIP has a hard-earned reputation for careful attention to both law and fact. We always look for environmental improvements that make economic sense in the long run. Our backgrounds in law, engineering, public health, government, economics, and environmental science help us to see the full picture. In fact, our work has been cited in Congressional hearings and debates, in reports by the U.S. General Accountability Office, and in frequent news articles.
A MESSAGE FROM OUR EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
At the heart of our nation’s environmental laws are promises that have stood the test of time and proved strong enough to confront new challenges.
These promises include the right of citizens to breathe air without risking asthma attacks, heart disease, or cancer. Americans, rich and poor, have a right to water that is clean enough to drink, or to swim or fish in. The Supreme Court has ruled that EPA must regulate global warming pollution.
A far-sighted Congress gave ordinary citizens the power to enforce environmental rules when bureaucracies stumble or polluters flout the law. But it takes legal and technical know-how to exercise that power, especially when big agencies or well-connected polluters are on the other side of the table. That’s where the Environmental Integrity Project comes in.
We work to make the government hear the voices of the people they are supposed to protect when writing rules or issuing permits. And we take action against power companies, refineries, factory farms, and other industries for violating laws that protect our health and the quality of our air or water.
Eric Schaeffer
Executive Director
OUR HISTORY
The Environmental Integrity Project was founded in 2002 by Eric Schaeffer, who resigned his position as director of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s office of civil enforcement in protest when the Bush White House clearly interfered with Clean Air Act efforts to reduce pollution from coal-fired power plants.
In his resignation letter to EPA Administrator Christine Whitman, Schaeffer noted that “Teddy Roosevelt, a Republican and our greatest environmental President, said, ‘Compliance with the law is demanded as a right, not asked as a favor.’ By showing that powerful utility interests are not exempt from that principle, you will prove to EPA’s staff that their faith in the Agency’s mission is not in vain.”
The issue that he was frustrated about was not a trivial one. In the three years leading up to that date, EPA had filed lawsuits against nine utilities for expanding coal-fired power plants without obtaining permits or installing air pollution control devices required by law. The plants released enough smog-forming pollutants and soot-like particles to cause nearly 11,000 premature deaths per year from heart attacks and lung disease.
Determined to fight back against the kind of interference that jeopardizes public health in a very real, quantifiable way, Schaeffer and a fellow EPA attorney formed a new nonprofit organization, the Environmental Integrity Project (EIP), which for the last decade and a half has been dedicated to the principal that politics should never get in the way of compliance with and enforcement of environmental laws.
EIP opened offices in Washington, D.C. and Austin, Texas and attracted a team of attorneys, data analysts, and others. With the support of the Rockefeller Family Fund and dozens of other donors, we have taken legal action through the years to stop big polluters, and to conduct investigations and write incisive, data-driven reports that have pushed both federal and state governments to tighten regulations and better protect public health.
Here are a few examples of EIP’s accomplishments:
- July 2018: After less than 18 months on the job, former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt resigned facing mounting criticism. EIP was the first organization to file FOIA requests to obtain Pruitt’s travel and meeting records. Our investigations sparked two federal probes, by the EPA Office of Inspector General and the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
- March 2016: After legal action by EIP and south Baltimore residents opposed to the construction of America’s biggest trash-burning incinerator, the Maryland Department of the Environment nullified the permit for the proposed Energy Answers plant in Fairfield.
- September 2015: In response to a lawsuit by EIP and allies, EPA issued regulations that will require coal-fired power plants across the U.S. to reduce by about 90 percent the toxic metals in the wastewater they pipe into rivers, streams and lakes.
- April 2014: EIP’s legal pressure on the owners of the largest ash waste pond in the U.S., the leaky Little Blue Run Impoundment in western Pennsylvania, forced the state to order its closure and a $169 million cleanup.
- January, 2013: GenOn, a power company originally known as Mirant and which owned three leaky coal ash waste landfills in Maryland, signed a consent decree agreeing to clean up the widespread water pollution problems and pay a $2 million fine after legal action by EIP and allies.
- December, 2013: In an innovative settlement that significantly reduced air pollution in Corpus Christi, Koch Industries’ Flint Hills Resources agreed to cap and monitor greenhouse gas emissions and cut sulfur dioxide and other pollutants that would have been released from an expansion of an oil refinery.
- February, 2013: The developers of a proposed 1,200 megawatt coal-fired power plant in Matagorda County, Texas, dropped their plans to proceed after EIP and other environmentalists objected to its permit because of substantial increases of air and water pollution.
- May 2012: A Texas judge rejected the construction permit for a proposed power plant, the Las Brisas Energy Center in Corpus Christi, that EIP and allies opposed because it would add excessive amounts of air pollution and cause asthma attacks and other health problems.
- May 2012: In response to a permit challenge by EIP and others, EPA announced a settlement with BP that requires the company to spend more than $300 million to reduce more than 4,000 tons of air pollution annually from its Whiting refinery in Indiana.
- December, 2011:The Southwestern Electric Power Company agreed to install 400 megawatts of wind turbines as part of a settlement that EIP and several other environmental groups reached in a lawsuit over a dirty coal-fired power plant in southwest Arkansas.
- July 2006: The owners of the Hatfield Ferry coal-burning power plant in southwest Pennsylvania agree to install an air pollution control device called a “scrubber” to reduce its sulfur dioxide emissions by 95 percent after legal action by EIP and allies.
Environmental Integrity Project
https://www.environmentalintegrity.org
1.
Missing: wehrum | Must include: wehrum
Who We Are · Our Staff · Reports · Job Opportunities
Who We Are - Environmental Integrity Project
https://www.environmentalintegrity.org › who-we-are
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Missing: wehrum | Must include: wehrum
[PDF]
Toxic Shell Game - Environmental Integrity Project
https://www.environmentalintegrity.org › wp-content › uploads › 2017/02
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Internal emails show top EPA official lobbied to loosen air ...
https://thinkprogress.org › top-epa-official-wehrum-secretly-lobbied-the-a...
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:{[PDF]:(style="font-weight:bold;cursor:auto;margin:0px 3px 0px 0px;float:left"):}:
Letter - Democrats, Energy and Commerce Committee
https://energycommerce.house.gov › sites › files › documents
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Enviros Want DC Review Of 'Once In, Always In' Panel Ruling ...
https://www.law360.com › articles › enviros-want-dc-review-of-once-in-alw...
Oct 7, 2019 - ... Club and the Environmental Integrity Project argued that the panel majority ... "As in Whitman, the Wehrum memo embodies EPA's definitive ...
DC Circ. Says EPA Pollution Policy Shift Not 'Final' - Law360
https://www.law360.com › articles › dc-circ-says-epa-pollution-policy-shift-...
Aug 20, 2019 - Courts can't review a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency memorandum ... The EPA has since proposed a rule to codify Wehrum's memo. ... Against Toxics, Environmental Integrity Project, Louisiana Bucket Brigade, Ohio ...
Environmental Integrity Project on Twitter: "EIP's Eric Schaeffer ...
https://twitter.com › twitterapi › status
Sep 20, 2018 - EIP's Eric Schaeffer weighs in on why EPA air chief Bill Wehrum's recent recusal statement is far from satisfactory. “That kind of language is ...
Trump's EPA quietly revamps rules for air pollution | TheHill
https://thehill.com › policy › healthcare › 383661-trumps-epa-quietly-reva...
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:{[PDF]:(style="font-weight:bold;cursor:auto;margin:0px 3px 0px 0px;float:left"):}:
1 September 24, 2019 EPA Docket Center Environmental ...
https://www.edf.org › files › Joint-NGO-Letter-Opposing-OIAI-Proposal
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OMFG
https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/that-1970s-scourge-acid-rain-is-back/
1970s scourge acid rain is back
Starting in the 1970s acid rain turned hundreds of lakes and streams in Adirondack Park in upstate New York so acidic that fish could not survive. Acid rain can be…
no lnx
That 1970s scourge acid rain is back
Written by Sarah Okeson / DC ReportOctober 26, 2019
Starting in the 1970s acid rain turned hundreds of lakes and streams in Adirondack Park in upstate New York so acidic that fish could not survive. Acid rain can be so toxic that it etches paint off cars.
The good news: some naturally reproducing trout were recently found in one body of water in the Adirondacks. Lake Colden had been without such naturally grown fish for 32 years. This revival comes after decades of government work to reduce the toxic air emissions that cause acid rain.
The bad news: Team Trump seems determined to create a comeback for acid rain. That would mean 500 other Adirondack ponds and lakes would continue without naturally breeding fish. Worse, some of the sprawling park’s 2,300 other bodies of water might also become too toxic for other wildlife such as crayfish, salamanders and frogs. And because acid rain leaches aluminum in the soil it also kills trees.
For people in the Northeast, it would also mean more asthma and heart disease as people breathe in air laced with greater amounts of sulfur dioxide, a toxic gas that causes acid rain.
The Trump EPA wants to squash Obama era rules that would force owners of electric power plants to clean up their toxic wastes.
To understand how Team Trump helps polluters and hurts everyone else, consider the coal-burning Martin Lake Power Plant in east Texas. It spews more sulfur dioxide than any other power plant in America. Last year it spit out 56,198 tons of sulfur dioxide, a 54% increase over 2017.
Acid rain, then and now.(From Environmental Defense Fund)]
Now the Trump EPA wants to squash Obama era rules that would force owners of this and other power plants to clean up their toxic wastes. Owners who escape these clean-up costs reap bigger profits. The rest of us pay the price: more sickness, shorter lives for some and hundreds of lakes with no fish surrounded by dying forests.
To help polluters escape those costs the Trump administration puts executives, lawyers and lobbyists for polluting companies in charge of various units of the Environmental Protection Agency and other regulatory bodies. Instead of enforcement of clean air laws, Team Trump runs a protection racket for polluters.
Plant Owners Identified
The Texas power plant is owned by Luminant Generation Co., part of Vistra Energy. One of Vistra’s lobbying firms once employed a lawyer who was hired to head the Trump EPA air office. Vistra is one of nine politically connected polluters being scrutinized by Congressional investigators. In 2018 alone it gave more than $101,000 to members of Congress at a three-to-one ratio favoring Republicans.
The lawyer was Bill Wehrum, who oversaw the Trump EPA’s air policy office until he resigned in June during a federal ethics investigation.Previously Wehrum was a partner at Hunton & Williams where he made $2.1 million. That law firm is now known as Hunton Andrews Kurth. A Congressional report dubbed the law firm “industry’s secret pipeline to EPA.”
Vistra Energy paid $140,000 in lobbying fees last year to Hunton Andrews Kurth.
Wehrum was accused of repeatedly violating his ethics pledge and legal duty to refrain from EPA matters involving his former clients. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, known as CREW, in May filed a detailed 14-page complaint against Wehrum with the EPA’s acting inspector general.
Other big sulfur dioxide polluters include DTE Energy Co., represented by Hunton Andrews Kurth in a long battle with the EPA over pollution from its coal-fired power plant in Monroe, Mich. David Harlow, attorney for the EPA Office of Air and Radiation, previously represented DTE for Hunton Andrews Kurth.
Lobbyists As Regulators
Soon after Harlow and Wehrum joined the EPA, the agency changed its position on a core issue in DTE’s case, adopting the company’s view.
A slightly different pro-polluter tactic was adopted for the power plant in east Texas. With former lobbyists for polluters in charge, the EPA made a mistake during the Obama years when it declared that parts of two counties near the Martin Lake plant exceeded the standard for sulfur dioxide emissions.
Trump’s EPA now wants to say the two-county area is “unclassifiable.” That would allow the plant to continue spewing tons of toxic air.
Because of actions assisting polluters, environmentalists fear acid rain is back.
While rain typically is slightly acidic with a pH reading of close to 6, acid rain is sometimes 3.2. That may not seem like much because pH is a scale. But acid rain can be more than 200 times more acidic than pollution-free rainfall.
Acid Rain Effects
EPA infographic]
Today 500 of 2,800 lakes and ponds in Adirondack State Park cannot support the plants and aquatic life that once existed in them.
Worse, acid rain can cause people to develop asthma as they breathe in even small concentrations of sulfur dioxide and the tiny particles it can form in the air. And it’s deadly for trees, trout and turtles.
“The numbers are going in the wrong direction,” said William Janeway, executive director of the Adirondack Council, about rising acidity in Northeast rainfall.
Adirondack, a state park, covers more than six million acres, making it bigger than the combined acreage of Yosemite, Yellowstone, Glacier, Grand Canyon and the Great Smokies National Parks.
When power plants in the heartland burn coal laced with sulfur the toxic waste goes up smokestacks. Prevailing winds that tend to blow eastward then carry pollution from these coal-burning power plants to the Northeast where much of it falls in rain that kills. Team Trump not only thinks that is fine, it wants more acid rain.
dingdong
https://www.alternet.org/2019/06/climate-expert-literally-dances-after-learning-controversial-epa-air-chief-is-leaving-amid-ethics-probe
Climate expert literally dances after learning controversial EPA air chief is leaving amid ethics probe
Climate expert literally dances after learning controversial EPA air chief is leaving amid ethics probe Image via Wikimedia Commons.
written by Alex Henderson June 26, 2019
In a press release on Wednesday, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced the departure of Bill Wehrum, the controversial assistant administrator for the EPA’s Office of Air and Radiation. And Wehrum’s environmental record has been so abysmal that according to HuffPost’s Jennifer Bendery, a climate change activist/expert was dancing with joy in response to the news of his departure from the EPA.
Bendery didn’t mean “dancing” as a figure of speech. On Twitter, Bendery reported on Wednesday that according to a source, the activist — who she didn’t mention by name — was “literally” dancing after learning that Wehrum was leaving the EPA.
As president, Donald Trump has been highly critical of President Barack Obama’s environmental record — trumpeting his love of fossil fuels and insisting that EPA standards were much too severe under Obama’s watch. Wehrum, after being appointed to the EPA, played a key role in rolling back Obama-era environmental policies. And his departure comes in response to allegations of ethics violations. Wehrum’s critics allege that after joining the EPA, he promoted the interests of former clients in the energy sector.
Jennifer Bendery
?
@jbendery
A source tells me a climate change expert in DC was dancing in the halls just now, literally, at this news. https://twitter.com/jbendery/status/1143918986591186944 …
Jennifer Bendery
?
@jbendery
EPA air chief Bill Wehrum abruptly departs amid ethics probe https://www.huffpost.com/entry/bill-wehrum-epa-air-pollution-ethics-probe_n_5d138699e4b09ad014f9330d?dtt … via @AlexCKaufman
In an official statement, Noah Bookbinder — executive director of the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics — asserted, “While not the biggest name to face ethics problems in the Trump Administration, William Wehrum was emblematic of the Administration’s struggles to remain ethical.From almost the moment he took over the EPA, Wehrum appears to have been working to advance the interests of his former clients, apparently violating both his ethics agreement and the Trump Administration’s ethics pledge.”
HuffPost’s Alexander C. Kaufman, in a June 26 article, cites some example of the alleged conflicts of interest on Wehrum’s part — for example, the House Committee on Energy & Commerce is investigating the allegation that Wehrum and a top deputy used their positions in the EPA to help utility companies they had represented when they were with the law firm now known as Hunton Andrews Kurth (which wasHunton & Williams at the time).
Also, Kaufman reports, Wehrum met with the Utility Air Regulatory Group (UARG), a former client known for aggressively promoting fossil fuels. That organization, which disbanded in May, was funded by several companies that opposed stricter limits on pollution caused by coal-fired plants.
Rep. Frank Pallone, the New Jersey Democrat who now heads the House Energy and Commerce Committee, is glad to see Wehrum go — describing his departure as “welcome news.”
“Much like UARG suddenly dissolving in the face of scrutiny,” Pallone told HuffPost, “Wehrum is now suddenly leaving amidst investigations into his potential ethical misconduct — investigations that should and will continue.”
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https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2019/06/huffpost-just-published-a-bombshell-story-about-the-epa/
A top Environmental Protection Agency official gave a presentation last year at a gathering of some of the most zealous deniers of climate science, highlighting the influence a small, fringe movement hawking crank theories now wields in Washington.
Emails HuffPost reviewed reveal Bill Wehrum, the EPA’s assistant administrator for air and radiation, gave a presentation in early February 2018 at an event organized by the Cooler Heads Coalition, an umbrella group of tax-exempt charities and right-wing nonprofits that includes some of the most ardent proponents of climate change denial.
Three other EPA officials―associate administrator Tate Bennett, senior counsel David Harlow and then-spokeswoman Liz Bowman―attended the confab with Wehrum, the emails show.
In an email dated Feb. 6, 2018, Myron Ebell, who has led the Cooler Heads Coalition for more than two decades, offered gratitude for the EPA officials’ attendance at the previous day’s event, and invited the group to the next meeting a month later.
“Thanks Bill, David, Liz, and Tate, for coming to Cooler Heads and for your presentation and taking questions, Bill. It was most useful,” Ebell, who led the Trump administration’s EPA transition team, wrote. “We look forward to seeing any or all of you at future meetings.”
The EPA declined to comment on the nature of Wehrum’s presentation and whether any officials attended other events with the Cooler Heads Coalition.
“EPA takes time to meet with stakeholders on a variety of regulatory issues, this is no different,” said EPA spokesman Michael Abboud.
Ebell did not respond to calls and text messages requesting comment.
The revelation is not surprising from an administration that’s attempting to eliminate or delay, by The New York Times’ estimate, at least 83 environmental regulations, particularly rules to curb climate pollution. The EPA is expected to announce a proposal next week to replace Obama-era power plants rules with a regulation that would, by the agency’s own estimates, allow for enough pollution to cause up to additional 1,400 premature deaths per year by 2030.
“The fact that Bill went to talk to a group like this is the cherry on top of a toxic sundae,” Joseph Goffman, a former senior counsel and associate administrator for climate who served in the Obama-era EPA, said by phone. “It’s the toxicity of the sundae that’s really going to have the damaging impact on people’s lives.”
But the emails show the degree to which top officials at the nation’s leading public health agency have cultivated chummy ties with “fringe conspiracy theorists,” the Sierra Club, which released the records obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, said in a statement, calling the relationship “despicable.”
“It removes any illusion that the EPA is acting in good faith to ensure the public trust,” said Robert Brulle, an environmental sociologist at Drexel University.
The Cooler Heads Coalition formed in the late 1990s as mounting evidence of global warming began to fracture the industrial alliance that mobilized a decade earlier to downplay the threat of unfettered greenhouse gas emissions. A year before its merger with oil giant Mobil, Exxon gave $95,000 to the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the right-wing think tank where Ebell works, in a grant titled “Global Climate Change Program and other support,” according to documents published by the Climate Investigations Center.
Yet as the oil industry started distancing itself from widely debunked scientific contrarians, far-right philanthropists and dark-money groups stepped in to fundthe Cooler Heads Coalition’s members. The financiers include the Donors Trust, Donors Capital Fund, and the foundations of the oil industrialist Scaife family, the manufacturing scion Bradley family and the Mercers, the Long Island hedge funders who backed President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign.
That marked a shift from climate denial as a practical means of protecting carbon-polluting industries toward a new ideological fervor, enshrining opposition to climate science as a key part of anti-government dogma, said Riley Dunlap, a researcher and professor emeritus at Oklahoma State University who tracks climate denial groups.
“The Cooler Heads Coalition grew out of the frustration that industry was no longer opposing climate change as much as they thought,” Dunlap said. It’s “really a radical group of climate change deniers.”
The realities of climate change were clear to scientists even before rising seas started to inundate coastal cities like Miami on sunny days and extreme hurricanes and wildfires devastated Puerto Rico, California and Texas in recent years. At least 97% of peer-reviewed research concludes that emissions from burning fossil fuels, industrial farming and deforestation blanket the planet in gases that trap the sun’s heat in the atmosphere. A 2015 paper, meanwhile, found significant flaws in the methodologies, assumptions and analyses used by the 3% of scientists who concluded otherwise.
At 70%, the vast majority of Americans understand climate change is happening, and 57% recognize humans are the primary driver, according to polling data from the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication. In October, the United Nations released a dire report warning that, unless world governments slash emissions by nearly half over the next decade, the planet is projected to warm beyond 1.5 degrees Celsius, or 2.3 degrees Fahrenheit, causing about $54 trillion in damages and killing millions. A month later, the National Climate Assessment, a congressionally mandated report by scientists at 13 federal agencies, confirmed the findings.
That’s done little to sway Wehrum.
In January, he said he was still on the fence about climate change, telling E&E News, “I’m trying to figure that out.”
“I’ve had a series of briefings with climate change experts to help me better understand this,” Wehrum told Reuters that same month. “Everybody is still exploring the science of climate change.”
A former corporate lawyer who lobbied on behalf of clients to weaken air pollution rules, Wehrum has ramped up those efforts since joining the EPA, becoming a chief architect of the Trump administration’s deregulatory agenda. He remains in close touch with his former law firm, according to The Washington Post.
“It’s not surprising that Wherum would have been featured at a Cooler Heads Coalition event,” Kert Davies, director of Climate Investigations Center, said by email. “He fits right in with the roster of climate deniers and other charlatans that Cooler Heads has hosted at events over the past two decades.”
==
https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/CHRG-115shrg34874/pdf/CHRG-115shrg34874.pdf
refused recusal list months, gave list of cases:
api, afpm, env integrity pjt, km, gas, ga-pac, brick, ultilities
inhofe confirm of wheeler
...
Please provide state-by-state data and a national total for facilities identified in !(c) e. Please provide the potential maximum amount of pollution increases for all 187 hazardous air pollutants as a result of EPA's decision to revoke the "once in, always in" policy. f. How much additional particulate matter, ozone, lead and other criteria pollution will be added to the atmosphere as a result of revoking the "once in, always in" policy? g. Under the new memorandum, have any major source facilities in the power plant source category requested to be re-designated as an area source? If so, please provide a list of all such facilities, also indicating whether EPA has approved the re-designation. h. Under the new memorandum how many major sources facilities, other than facilities in the power plant source category, have asked to be re-designated as an area source? Please provide a list of all facilities, also indicating whether EPA bas approved the re-designation. The January 25, 2018 Wehrum guidance memo builds upon a 2007 proposed rule that addressed the same issue. In that proposal, EPA asserted that, "The environmental, economic, and energy impacts of the proposed amendments cannot be quantified without knowing which sources will avail themselves of the regulatory provisions proposed in this rule, and what methods of HAP emission reductions will be used. It is unknown how many sources would choose to take permit conditions that would limit their potential to emit (PTE) to below major source levels. Within this group, it is also not known how many sources may increase their emissions from the major source MACT level (assuming the level is below the major source thresholds). Similarly, we cannot identify or quantify the universe of sources that would decrease their HAP emissions to below the level required by the NESHAP to achieve area source status." (72 FR 77, ,January 3, 2007). In the 2007 proposed rule, EPA concluded that, "we believe it is unlikely that a source that currently emits at a level below the major source thresholds as the result of compliance with a MACT standard would increase its emissions in response to this rule. However, even if such increases occur, the increases will likely be offset by emission reductions at other sources that should occur as the result of this proposal. Specifically, this proposal provides an incentive for those sources that are currently emitting above major source thresholds and complying with MACT, to reduce their HAP emissions to below the major source thresholds." (72 FR 73-74, January 3, 2007)
...
When Trump's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced its replacement for the Obama-era Clean Power Plan in August 2018, its own estimates said the reduced regulations could lead to 1,400 early deaths a year from air pollution by 2030.
Now, the EPA wants to change the way it calculates the risks posed by particulate matter pollution, using a model that would lower the death toll from the new plan, The New York Times reported Monday. Five current or former EPA officials familiar with the plan told The Times that the new method would assume there is no significant health gain by lowering air pollution levels below the legal limit. However, many public health experts say that there is no safe level of particulate matter exposure, which has long been linked to heart and lung disease.
"Using fake math to hide the death toll from dirty air at the behest of the coal industry is sadly consistent with the Trump administration's complete disregard for public health," Environmental Working Group(EWG) Senior Science Advisor for Children's Environmental Health Dr. Olga Naidenko said in responseto the plan. "This sleight of hand means that more adults may die early and more children may become victims of asthma."
New York University environmental law expert Richard L. Revesz called the proposed change a "monumental departure" from how the agency has calculated air pollution risk under past administrations from both parties.
"Particulate matter is extremely harmful and it leads to a large number of premature deaths," Revesz said.
The new method will be used in the EPA's final version of the Clean Power Plan replacement, the Affordable Clean Energy Rule, due to be released in June. The new rule would improve the efficiency of coal plants slightly while also allowing older plants to remain in operation longer, leading both to more climate-change causing emissions and more particulate matter pollution.
When asked if the new method would appear in the final plan, former chemical and fossil fuel lobbyist and current EPA Assistant Administrator for the Office of Air and Radiation William L. Wehrumsaid the final draft would include multiple approaches and that the agency had not officially changed its methodology.
However, Wehrum also called the focus on the 1,400 number "unfortunate" and said the agency was considering a number of alternative calculations that would lead to lower death tolls. He said the lower figure would be included to show that different assumptions could lead to different results, but said that any new method would be peer-reviewed before being used as the EPA's leading means of assessing air pollution risk.
EPA spokesman James Hewitt echoed that message in a statement to CNN.
"No change to this scientific method will be made unless and until the new approach has been peer reviewed," he said.
The EPA is considering the new method as part of its regular review of air quality standards, which it aims to complete by 2020, CNN reported.
In recent years, studies have shown a growing number of health risks associated with particulate matter exposure, including dementia. Colorado School of Public Health Dean Dr. Jonathan M. Samet told The New York Times that most new studies showed risks at levels of exposure below the EPA's legal limit of 12 micrograms per cubic meter on average per year.
"It's not a hard stop where we can say 'below that, air is safe.' That would not be supported by the scientific evidence," Samet said. "It would be very nice for public health if things worked that way, but they don't seem to."
Revesz worried the new method would be used to roll back other environmental regulations as well.
"It could be an enormously significant impact," he told The New York Times.
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From Your Site Articles
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https://www.desmogblog.com/2018/10/02/climate-science-deniers-trump-admin-happer-wehrum-rollins-wynn-simmons
readfearn
here are five folks spearheading the United States government who think that when it comes to climate change, they know better than all of the world’s main scientific institutions.
There’s Donald Trump himself, of course, who famously tweeted that climate change was a hoax invented by the Chinese, and said that a cold snap in the weather overturns a century or more of scientific inquiry.
Then there’s energy secretary Rick Perry, whose fuzzy logic on the science sees him unconvinced that CO2 is the key driver of climate change.
Ryan Zinke, Secretary of the Interior, is similarly confused and non-committal about the impacts of burning fossil fuels, as is former coal-lobbyist-turned-EPA head Andrew Wheeler. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson said in 2015 that climate change was “irrelevant,” that temperatures were driven by natural cycles and, since then, hasavoided questions about the role of human activity in climate change.
OK, so there are more than five (with Mike Pence, Mike Pompeo, and Jeff Sessions among those who have denied the science in the past), but these five are well positioned to influence the energy and climate policies of the nation.
Wheeler, for example, is driving through cuts to national efficiency standards for motor vehicles and is relaxing pollution rules on coal power plants. Zinke and Perry are aggresively promoting fossil fuel growth with Trump as the climate-wrecker-in-chief. Carson heads an agency that has a role in promoting (or not) climate change adaptation and resilience for homes and properties, particularly after natural disasters.
Remembering not only do these five reject the advice of the world’s major science academies, but also the expertise of the scientists working in their own government agencies.
But while these five might be relative household names with their views well reported, DeSmog presents five lesser-known climate science deniers inside the administration who are also in positions to gut federal action on climate and promote fossil fuel-friendly policies, backed by their own convictions that climate change just isn't much of a problem.
Will Happer
Will Happer, emeritus professor from Princeton University, was once in the running as Trump’s science advisor but has now been appointed to the National Security Council, specializing in emerging technologies.
After news of Happer’s appointment became public, Science, republishing E&E News, characterized the 79-year-old physicist as a “vocal critic of mainstream climate science.”
But Happer is more than a mere critic — he has acted as an enabler and activist against action on climate change for well over a decade.
For years, Happer was chairman at the George Marshall Institute and then, when that was shuttered, he founded the CO2Coalition with former Exxon director, the late Roger Cohen. Both groups took fringe positions on the science of climate change, with Happer claiming that adding more fossil fuel emissions into the atmosphere will be good for humans.
In 2015, Happer was caught in a sting by Greenpeace when he offered to write a report on the “benefits” of CO2 for a fake oil client and then hide the funding, which would be directed to the CO2 Coalition. Since then, that group has received funding from the foundation of Trump backer and hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer.
In December 2016, Happer attended a conference organized by conspiracy theorist G. Edward Griffin. Now he’s on the National Security Council.
Late in 2017, the Trump administration nixed climate change from a list of global threats to the U.S. in the National Security Strategy.
It's safe to say Happer won't be leading any pushes to add it back in.
Bill Wehrum
Bill Wehrum is the U.S. government’s most senior official on air pollution, as the assistant administrator in the Office of Air and Radiation at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
Wehrum is a long-serving lawyer for the coal industry, as well as petrochemical and petroleum industry groups (such as Koch Industries).
Wehrum’s office is also tasked with looking at regulations to tackle power plant pollution and climate change and recently proposed the Affordable Clean Energy rule as a replacement for Obama's Clean Power Plan.
But as the New York Times reported, Wehrum has been delivering big time for his former fossil fuel industry clients by proposing the new rule, which EPA's own analysis shows would increase premature deaths from pollution.
One former EPA director, Bruce Buckheit, told the New York Times: “They basically found the most aggressive and knowledgeable fox and said, ‘Here are the keys to the hen-house.'”
Over a decade earlier, Wehrum was in the same position at EPA as he is now and back then argued against granting California a Clean Air Act waiver to set more stringent pollution standards for vehicles.
Back in power at the EPA, he ran the agency's midterm review of auto emissions standards, which this year recommended rolling back the stricter standards proposed by the Obama administration.
Under question during his confirmation hearings, Wehrum claimed that CO2 emissions as a main driver of climate change, which the government’s own scientists confirm, was to him an “open question." [vid]
Brooke Rollins
Rollins was an aide to Texas Governor Rick Perry before spending 15 years leading the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF), which she left in early 2018 to become assistant to the president in the Office of American Innovation (OIA), based in the White House (some wonder what the OIA actually does).
During her time at TPPF, Rollins promoted the work of the organization’s Kathleen Hartnett White, a climate science denier and fossil fuel evangelist whose controversial nomination to lead the White House Council on Environmental Quality was ultimately withdrawn.
In August 2018, Rollins appeared at the Heartland Institute’s energy conference alongside that think tank’s new president Tim Huelskamp.
At the conference, Rollins nodded as Huelskamp suggested American schoolchildren’s heads were being “filled with mush” about the dangers of CO2.
When asked if the inner-workings of the White House were as chaotic as some media had claimed, Rollins replied: “Is there chaos? Yes. But I would say it’s like the chaos of my home — having four children in five years.”
Home life was like a “goat rodeo,” she said, and working in the White House wasn’t “much different.”
While at TPPF, Rollins wrote that Trump should exit the Paris climate agreement.
What she's actually doing in her role with OIA remains unclear, but the fact that she appeared at the America First Energy Conference, hosted by a climate science denying think tank, indicates she isn't likely straying from her previous positions on climate and energy.
Todd Wynn
Todd Wynn is director of the Interior Department’s Office of Intergovernmental and External Affairs after spending years in pro-fossil fuel industry think tanks, many with Koch network connections.
On Wynn’s CV is his time working at the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the corporate bill mill where he led that group’s energy task force.
In that position, he fought against state renewable energy mandates and federal regulation of fracking fluids.
Lisa Graves, co-director of DocumentedInvestigations.org, has described Wynn as an “aggressive fossil fuel insider.”
In his new position with the Department of the Interior, Wynn is responsible for “strengthen[ing] relationships between state and local partners and external stakeholders” with Secretary Zinke's office, which, by the looks of it, has already been quite cozy with fossil fuel stakeholders.
An investigation by HuffPost alleged Wynn may have violated an ethics pledge by continuing to liaise with former associates while in his new job.
“Wynn has been a rising star in the influential network of fossil fuel-funded think tanks that push policies and produce pseudoscientific research to muddle the debate on climate change,” the HuffPost report detailed.
Wynn has himself questioned the role that fossil fuel emissions have on warming the planet, suggesting in 2010 that it was “absolutely ridiculous” to claim CO2 was driving climate change.
Daniel Simmons
Who better to lead the Trump administration's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy than a man who once asked for that same office to be closed while barracking for fossil fuels? Daniel Simmons is just that guy.
As reported by DeSmog and others, Simmons spent years working for so-called “free market think tanks,” including the Institute for Energy Research, before joining the Trump transition team and then securing the nomination for the role, located in the Department of Energy.
Simmons has a history of working at organizations that attack programs aimed at encouraging the development of clean energy industries like solar and wind power. But in 2015, the American Energy Alliance (AEA), where he was working, attacked the office Simmons now heads, writing disapprovingly that its role was to “promote and subsidize 'clean energy' as determined by government bureaucrats.”
The office, AEA wrote, “aims to control multiple sectors of the economy, from energy production and transmission to manufacturing and construction.” Cutting the office entirely could “save” the administration more than $9 billion. Simmons himself has claimed that the costs of the Paris climate agreement target of keeping global temperatures below 2 degrees Celsius would be greater than any benefits.
Perfect man for the job? In the Trump administration, the answer is yes.
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https://www.ecowatch.com/trump-power-plant-plan-co2-2597454144.html
Trump Power Plant Plan Will Significantly Increase CO2 Pollution
The Trump administration is expected on Tuesday to propose a major rollback of the Clean Power Plan, President Obama's signature climate policy.
The replacement will relax rules for coal-fired plants and will very likely increase air pollution and planet-warming carbon dioxide emissions.
The new plan, as the Washington Post reported, would allow states to set their own coal emission standards or even opt-out altogether, and provides companies incentives to ensure coal plants operate longer. It's a clear contrast to the Obama plan, which was aimed at phasing out coal and transitioning to cleaner power sources to avoid dangerous climate change.
The Trump rule "is projected to release at least 12 times the amount of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere compared with the Obama rule over the next decade," the Post reported. To illustrate how different the plans are, by 2030, the Trump proposal would cut carbon dioxide emissions from 2005 levels by 0.7 to 1.5 percent, or the equivalent of taking 2.7 million to 5.3 million cars off the road. In contrast, Obama's initiative had a goal of slashing CO2 emissions around 19 percent in the same time frame, or the equivalent of taking 75 million cars off the road.
"These numbers tell the story, that they really remain committed not to do anything to address greenhouse gas emissions. They show not merely indifference to climate change, but really, opposition to doing anything about climate change," Jose Goffman, executive director of Harvard Law School's Environmental Law Program and an architect of the Obama-era policy, told the Post.
The New York Times reported Sunday that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) air office head, William L. Wehrum, was key in developing the power plant plan that would surely please his corporate clients. The former industry lawyer represented a host of coal, oil, gas and chemical companies, and was a George W. Bush-era EPA official.
"They basically found the most aggressive and knowledgeable fox and said, 'Here are the keys to the hen house,'" said Bruce Buckheit, an air pollution expert and the former EPA head of air pollution enforcement for Republican and Democratic administrations, to the Times.
Meanwhile, Michelle Bloodworth, president of the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity,which advocates on behalf of major U.S. coal producers, said the new rules would "provide the flexibility to states to develop emissions guidelines that recognize the important role that our nation's coal fleet plays," she told Financial Times.
The new measure, which President Trump will reportedly announce Tuesday during a visit to West Virginia, will be subject to a 60-day comment period.
At a New York fundraiser last week, Trump said that coal was an "indestructible" form of energy and once again criticized windmills, according to Newsweek. Saving the flagging coal industry and ending the so-called "war on coal" was a core component of his presidential campaign.
"Coal is indestructible. You can blow up a pipeline, you can blow up the windmills," Trump was heard saying in Utica.
...doc]
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https://www.edf.org/media/industry-lawyer-william-wehrum-confirmed-lead-epa-office-air-and-radiation
November 9, 2017) The Senate today confirmed industry attorney William Wehrum to serve as the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Assistant Administrator for Air and Radiation – the person responsible for carrying out our nation’s clean air laws and protecting the health of American communities and families from harmful air pollution.
“Wehrum’s long and troubling record of attacking clean air safeguards calls into question his commitment to protecting American communities from dangerous air pollution and the urgent threat of climate change,” said EDF Director of Regulatory Policy and Senior Attorney :{:{Tomás Carbonell:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px"):}::(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;text-decoration-line:underline"):}:. “Wehrum has sued EPA to tear down clear air and climate protections at least 31 times in the last decade. And Wehrum’s record as both a private attorney and an official in President George W. Bush’s EPA demonstrates a repeated tendency to undermine vital protections for public health, clean air, and climate security.”
Since 2007, Wehrum represented many members of the pollution-heavy oil and coal industries that EPA is statutorily required to regulate while working as a lobbyist and attorney at the Washington office of Hunton & Williams. In those 31 lawsuits, he represented clients including the American Petroleum Institute, the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers, American Chemistry Council, and Utility Air Regulatory Group.
Wehrum represented major polluters in at least two matters concerning EPA’s Air Office as recently as this summer – defending EPA Administrator Pruitt’s unlawful suspension of oil and gas pollution standards, and attacking urgently needed protections against chemical disasters like those that followed Hurricane Harvey.
Wehrum also spent six years in EPA’s Air Office under President George W. Bush, first as Counsel to the Assistant Administrator and then as Acting Assistant Administrator. Wehrum was the Air Office’s chief legal advisor when it issued some of the Bush Administration’s most harmful and unlawful environmental regulations, including rules that failed to properly protect Americans from mercury pollution and rules weakening New Source Review requirements for new and modified industrial facilities.
Wehrum also flagrantly rejects a core statutory duty of the office he will now lead – the Air Office’s obligation to protect Americans from dangerous climate pollution. In 2013, :{:{Wehrum told Law360:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px"):}::(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;text-decoration-line:underline"):}: that he “continue[d] to believe, that Congress never intended the EPA to address an issue such as climate change under the Clean Air Act” – six years after the :{:{Supreme Court ruled otherwise:(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px"):}::(style="margin:0px;padding:0px;border:0px;outline:0px;text-decoration-line:underline"):}:.
==
william L. Wehrum is an American attorney and government official who currently serves as Assistant Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency for Air and Radiation. Prior to assuming his current role, he was a partner and the head of the administrative law group at Hunton & Williams.[1]
Wehrum previously served two years as the EPA's Acting Assistant Administrator for Air and Radiation during the administration of George W. Bush.[2] He was previously nominated by President Bush in 2006 to become Assistant Administrator of the EPA for Air and Radiation, but his nomination was blocked by Senate Democrats.[3]
References
- :{Jump up:(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^ "Top EPA Presidential Nominees Approved By Senate EPW Committee". The White House. October 25, 2017. Retrieved 14 November 2017.
- :{Jump up:(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^ "President Donald J. Trump Announces Key Additions to his Administration". The White House. September 8, 2017. Retrieved 23 October 2017.
- :{Jump up:(style="user-select:none;top:-99999px;clip:rect(1px, 1px, 1px, 1px);overflow:hidden;position:absolute !important;padding:0px !important;border:0px !important;height:1px !important;width:1px !important"):}:^ Cama, Timothy (September 10, 2017). "Trump riles Dems with pick for powerful EPA job". The Hill. Retrieved 23 October 2017.
External links
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PA Memos Show Sneak Attack on Air Quality
Behind all the media attention focused on U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) head Scott Pruitt's many scandals, the agency has quietly passed a series of four memos since December that have a net impact of reducing air pollution controls to benefit industry, The Hill reported Wednesday.
The Hill's report comes just days before the world celebration of Earth Day on Sunday, April 22. The first Earth Day, in 1970, is often credited with leading to the passage of the Clean Air Act that same year, but now the Trump administration seems intent on rolling back that legacy.
"All of these [memos], individually and taken together, will result in more air pollution and less enforcement of the Clean Air Act," Paul Billings, senior vice president for advocacy at the American Lung Association, told The Hill.
What follows is a timeline and summary of the memos in question.
December 7, 2017: The EPA said it would not "second guess" a company's estimates of how much they will pollute after large projects, in part of a process called New Source Review, which the EPA undertakes to issue construction permits.
January 25: The EPA withdrew the "once in always in" policy stipulating that once a pollution source was classified as "major," it would always be subjected to tougher scrutiny. The new policy would allow industrial pollution sources to downgrade themselves to "area" sources of pollution once their emissions fell below certain standards.
Environmental groups have already sued over this rule change in March, saying it would allow industrial polluters in the Midwest alone to release four times the current amount of toxins into the air.
March 13: The EPA declared that, in the process to determine if a new project at an existing pollution source needs to pass a New Source Review, the company can now consider both emissions increases and decreases resulting from the project in step 1 of the process, instead of waiting for step 2 to take emissions decreases into account.
April 12: President Donald Trump signed an EPA memo that adjusted the enforcement of National Ambient Air Quality standards to be more friendly to industry.
The memo directed the EPA to speed up the review process for state plans for reducing smog, determine if existing smog and soot health standards should be altered or eliminated, and make it less difficult for companies to get air-quality permits, Think Progress reported.
The first two memos were written by EPA air office head Bill Wehrum, who also spent two years at the agency under Bush.
Billings told The Hill that the memos were designed to complete President George W. Bush's attempts to weaken EPA regulations, some of which failed.
"These were radical departures of current law when they were proposed a decade ago and they're just as radical today," he said.
Natural Resources Defense Council clean air director John Walke agreed that the new memos were an attempt to complete Bush-era rollbacks.
"I think Mr. Wehrum has decided this is likely a one-term administration and he's going to devote his full resources to rolling back clean air, climate and public health protections in the time available to him," Walke told The Hill.
https://www.ecowatch.com/epa-air-quality-pruitt-2561179827.html
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https://www.desmogblog.com/2018/04/10/koch-nichols-scott-pruitt-strip-california-waiver-regulate-auto-emissions
...In the weeks leading up to his announcement about the emissions standards, Pruitt had taken a more antagonistic tone towards California, signaling that he might attempt to revoke the waiver that was granted by the Obama administration, per legal mandate, in 2009.
“California is not the arbiter of these issues,” Pruitt told Bloomberg News in March, adding that the state “shouldn’t and can’t dictate to the rest of the country what these levels are going to be.”
With the waiver in hand, California can continue to enforce current greenhouse gas emissions standards, despite whatever the EPA sets as the new national standards for model years 2022-2025. On top of that, any other state can choose to adopt California’s standards, which 13 other states and the District of Columbia currently have.
Because these states represent roughly one-third of the country’s personal vehicle market, automakers would have to decide whether to set up two different production lines for states following the California standards and the rest of the country, or whether to treat California’s targets as a de facto national standard.
Predictably, the automakers, through the powerful Auto Alliance and Global Automakers trade groups, are calling for one national regime, which could result from a grand bargain like the one that Pruitt just scrapped, or could be delivered by Pruitt stripping California of its waiver.
Any attempt at such a repeal would be hugely controversial, and possibly illegal, due to many nuances in the Clean Air Act and the history of its application and enforcement. A waiver granted to California under the Clean Air Act has never been revoked, and has only been denied once.
Notably, that lone denial came in December 2007 when William (Bill) Wehrum, who ran the EPA’s clean air division at the time, convinced then-EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson to reject the state’s request to set its own greenhouse gas standards for vehicles, the very issue at hand today.
(California was later granted that same waiver in 2009 under the Obama administration, after the state sued the EPA, and after the Supreme Court had held in 2007 that the EPA was required to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. For a much more comprehensive background on California’s waiver and Wehrum’s opposition, see this recent Desmog article.)
Today, Wehrum is again the air chief at the EPA, and is again in a position to attempt to strip California of its unique authority to set its own air pollution limits. As Wehrum, Pruitt, and EPA policymakers work to figure out the new national emissions standards for cars and light trucks, they are hearing from groups including the American Consumer Institute and its Koch-tied coalition on the importance of revoking the California waiver.
Who Are the Groups Fighting California’s Clean Air Act Waiver?
The ACI letter to Pruitt, dated March 28, 2018, was signed by representatives from 11 groups, eight of which have known ties to the Koch network, and all of which are routine commenters on conservative issues.
The :{American Consumer Institute (ACI):(style="font-weight:700"):}: is credited with organizing the coalition, and the letter is signed by its President Steve Pociask. The group is best known for opposing net neutrality efforts while being funded by a major internet service provider (ISP) lobby, as journalist Lee Fang detailed for VICE. More recently, Pociask has turned his attention to attacking electric vehicles, writing on Forbes that “the science on electric vehicles does not support continuing California’s waiver.”
:{Less Government:(style="font-weight:700"):}:is an “organization dedicated to reducing the power of government and protecting the First Amendment from governmental assault,” which was founded and run by Seton Motley, who is also listed as a Policy Adviser to the climate science-denying Heartland Institute. Though Motley and his Less Government org have their roots in telecom and media issues, he has in recent years engaged more on climate and energy issues, signing some anti-wind energy letters organized by the Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity and writing a bit on electric vehicles.
The :{Taxpayers Protection Alliance (TPA):(style="font-weight:700"):}: is part of the network of front groups funded by the Koch brothers and their donor network through the Center to Protect Patient Rights (now called American Encore), and Freedom Partners. As the Energy and Policy Institute has described, “TPA essentially exists as a shell for its advocacy, based on its own IRS form 990s: 'The Taxpayers Protection Alliance has given control of the management duties and the daily activities of the organization to MLM Consulting, LLC (MLM). MLM will be responsible for managing the organization and work to support the exempt purposes of TPA. The President of TPA, David Williams, is the sole owner of MLM Consulting LLC.'” Williams signed the ACIletter to Pruitt. TPA has fought clean energy policy in the past using the website SolarSecrets.org and has published white papers arguing against solar energy tax credits.
:{Consumer Action for a Strong Economy :(style="font-weight:700"):}:is run by Matthew Kandrach, and has been linked to a number of coalition efforts stemming from the FreedomWorks organization, which was born of a merger between the Koch-founded Citizens for a Sound Economy (CSE) and Empower America.
American Commitment is run by Phil Kerpen, a former Vice President of Americans for Prosperity. The organization was founded by Sean Noble, a right-wing operative with close ties to the Koch brothers who also runs the Center to Protect Patient Rights (American Encore), a major funnel for Koch donor network money to front groups.
FreedomWorks was, as mentioned above, born of a merger between the Koch-founded Citizens for a Sound Economy (CSE)and Empower America, though it has no known Koch ties at present day. The group was described in a 2012 article in Mother Jonesas “one of the main political outfits of the conservative movement and an instrumental force within the tea party.” It pushes free market policies and has questioned the well-established science linking human activity to a warming planet.
The :{Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI):(style="font-weight:700"):}: is a conservative advocacy group dedicated to “economic freedom” that has received funding from ExxonMobil, Texaco, and the family foundations of the Koch brothers.
Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) is an anti-tax group that has received funding from the oil and gas lobbying group, the American Petroleum Institute, along with various groups in the Koch network such as the Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation and the Center to Protect Patient Rights, as well as DonorsTrust.
The :{60 Plus Association:(style="font-weight:700"):}: describes itselfas the conservative alternative to the American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) and receives significant funding from groups connected to the Koch brothers. The group has also received funding from the American Petroleum Institute, and was created by Sean Noble (see American Commitment above). Noble was until recently a consultant for the Arizona Public Service utility company, and has led efforts in Arizona to kill solar-friendly legislation.
Frontiers of Freedom, run by George Landrith, has received significant funding from Exxon, the Koch brothers, and dark money organizations like Donors Trust. In 2015, Landrith launched the Energy Equality Coalition to battle against the federal electric vehicle tax credit. The coalition also includes David Williams of the Taxpayer Protection Alliance and Horace Cooper, a senior fellow at the Heartland Institute. Landrith is also a directorof the National Center for Public Policy Research (NCPPR).
The Center for Freedom and Prosperity was once funded by the Charles Koch Foundation and has actively lobbied for more liberalized tax laws, and for less scrutiny towards offshore tax havens.
Seven of the organizations that signed this letter to Pruitt — and five of the actual representatives who signed — also recently penned a letter to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) defending “electronic and heat-not-burn” tobacco products (or vaping products), indicating that this network is defending the tobacco industry as well as oil and gas companies.
California and Partner States Fight Back
Nichols has signaled that California will not be retreating from its strong standards.
“California will not weaken its nationally accepted clean car standards, and automakers will continue to meet those higher standards, bringing better gas mileage and less pollution for everyone,” Nichols wrote in a statement emailed to reporters. “This decision takes the U.S. auto industry backward, and we will vigorously defend the existing clean vehicle standards and fight to preserve one national clean vehicle program.”
California Attorney General Xavier Becerra has also said that California is prepared to sue if the EPA moves to weaken the vehicle emissions standards.
“We are going to do everything that can been done to defend these standards,” Becerra toldReuterslast week. “So far, when we have been challenged on environmental standards we have had a good record in court. We haven’t lost a case.”
Under the Clean Air Act, the EPA is required to grant California a waiver on air pollution emissions standards if the state has “compelling and extraordinary circumstances,” which California argued a decade ago, and which the Obama administration agreed that it does. To revoke the waiver, the EPA would legally have to prove that those circumstances are no longer there. To satisfy the courts in California's inevitable legal challenge, this would require a comprehensive and scientifically rigorous analysis.
At the BNEF Future of Energy Summit on April 10, Nichols said, “The document that came out a week ago from the administrator did nothing to change the nature of the debate. It expressed Mr. Pruitt's view but there was absolutely nothing new in the way of data or analysis to support that view.”
She did indicate that she would be willing to sit down with the EPA and automakers to look at some “minor adjustments” to the technical changes measuring how companies could comply, but not the targets themselves. She provided an example related to electric vehicles. “Under the 2012 rules [car companies are] responsible for upstream emissions of power plants for charging EVs [electric vehicles]. I don't think that's a great idea. I didn't think so at the time.”
However, “if the whole system is up for reexamination,” said Nichols, “then that's a whole different story … That's a different fight. And we would win it.”
It’s also clear that other states would have California's back and join a legal fight, or start their own. Attorneys general from 11 states said last week in a statement that they would defend California's right to set firm standards.
“By cooking the books on its review of national auto emissions standards, the Trump administration is putting special interests ahead of New Yorkers’ health and wallets,” said New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman. “We stand ready to take legal action to block the Trump administration’s reckless and illegal efforts to reverse these critical standards and the gains we’ve made in ensuring cars are more fuel-efficient and less polluting.”
TAGS:
competitive enterprise institute
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WEHRUM IS the Trump administration’s pick to head the Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Air and Radiation. “Bill,” the first line of his bio at his law firm, Hunton & Williams, boasts, “is well known for his thorough grasp of environmental issues.”
In his Senate confirmation hearing this week, Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., put that claim to the test.
The senator produced a large graph for Wehrum from NASA, tracking levels of both greenhouse gas emissions and warming from 1880 through 2005. The lines follow one another fairly closely, including a dramatic upward spike through the latter half of the 20th century and early 21st. “Can you acknowledge,” Merkley asked, “that these lines generally track each other?”
“I’m not familiar with those data. I have no idea what it depicts,” Wehrum answers.
Merkley prods. “But you can see the lines. Do the lines track each other?”
“What’s important, senator, is to know how the data is depicted.”
“Yes it is,” Merkley agrees, “But I’m just asking a question: Can you see those two lines, and do they generally track each other?”