A coalition of environmental groups Wednesday filed a petition seeking to persuade EPA to reconsider its repeal of the vehicle climate rules, stepping up green attacks on the Trump administration’s deregulatory agenda.
The petition targets “numerous and foundational flaws in EPA’s rationales” in the final rule’s repeal of vehicle emissions standards, dovetailing with ongoing litigation over the repeal of the greenhouse gas endangerment finding.
The petition targets EPA’s finding that regulating tailpipe emissions would be futile because it would have little effect on warming or sea-level rise. After EPA abandoned a contentious Energy Department report questioning mainstream climate science, the agency relied more heavily on arguments that regulation would do little about the problem.
“The Trump EPA needs to pull this rule back and do the science the right way,” said Abi Vijayan, a senior climate attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council, in a statement. “If it did, it would show that limiting the largest source of climate pollution would in fact help make us all safer. The only thing futile here is the EPA’s arguments in court if it doesn’t address this error.”
