Health groups sue EPA over Trump climate rule rollback
Six environmental and public health groups sued the Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday over the Trump administration’s decision to eliminate most climate regulations on coal and gas power plants. The suit challenges a rule finalized earlier this week that the groups argue strips the agency of its duty to curb planet-warming emissions from the largest industrial source in the country.
The Natural Resources Defense Council, American Lung Association, American Public Health Association, Clean Air Council, Clean Wisconsin and the Environmental Defense Fund filed the lawsuit.
Under the new rule, existing coal and new gas plants will no longer have to prevent 90 percent of their carbon dioxide emissions from entering the atmosphere. The Biden administration had said its rules would prevent 1.38 billion metric tons of carbon emissions through 2047, the equivalent of taking 328 million gas-powered cars off the road for a year.
The administration’s action eliminates the vast majority of those rules. The administration estimated the move could save $310 billion.
“Repealing these standards without a replacement is an abdication of EPA’s legal responsibility to protect public health and the environment,” said Meredith Hankins, federal climate legal director at NRDC, in a written statement. “The Clean Air Act and Supreme Court precedent demand that the EPA address climate pollution from the largest industrial source in the nation. The EPA’s legal reasoning is fatally flawed, so we are going to court.”
“Emissions from power plants drive climate change, and climate change is a health emergency,” said Harold Wimmer, president and CEO of the American Lung Association. “Measures that clean up power plant emissions also clean up other lung-harming pollutants at the same time. EPA has the authority and the responsibility to protect people’s health from air pollution.”
The electric sector makes up a quarter of U.S. planet-heating emissions, making the rule one of the Trump administration’s most consequential climate rollbacks.
The EPA declined to comment on the lawsuit. In announcing the rule, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said: “For over 15 years, the Obama and Biden administrations implemented a war on coal to destroy reliable and affordable energy. The Trump Administration has come in to protect American energy and to make sure you can afford to keep the lights on.”
