ICYMI: Andrew Wheeler’s Recipe for the EPA

Yesterday, the Environmental Protection Agency released their 2018 year in review report. While this year’s report featured far fewer pictures of disgraced EPA administrator Scott Pruitt (0) than the 2017 wrap-up, the same anti-environmental agenda is heavily touted.

If the report is any inclination of how Acting Administrator Andrew Wheeler will run the EPA if confirmed, it’s clear this is his recipe for protecting our health and safety:

• Mix equal parts fabrication & climate denial
• Stir in rollbacks of health & environmental safeguards
• Add a handful of corporate polluter demands, a spoonful of toxic pollution, & a dash of gloating
• Bake at 1.5 degrees C

Here are the report highlights:

What is mentioned:

• Rollbacks of the clean car standards, Clean Power Plan and clean water protections
• Fossil fuels: coal, natural gas, and oil received 13, 43 and 36 mentions each

What isn’t mentioned:

• climate change  

The very first line of the report reads “Issued Major Proposals Including the Affordable Clean Energy Rule, the SAFE Vehicles Rule, and the New Waters of the U.S. Definition”

The “affordable clean energy rule” is the rollback of the Clean Power Plan and the “SAFE Vehicles Rule” is the roll back of the clean car standards. Before Wheeler got his hands on them, these safeguards were our two biggest defenses against climate pollution.

Clean Car Standards

Transportation is overwhelmingly the largest and fastest-growing source of emissions and oil consumption in the U.S. Our cars and pickup trucks account for almost 50 percent of oil used in the United States and nearly one-third of our greenhouse gas emissions. But the 2012 clean car standards proposed for rollback are helping to curb the emissions that cause climate change. If maintained, by 2025, vehicle efficiency and clean car standards are expected to*

• Nearly double vehicle efficiency;
• Save 6 billion metric tons of dangerous climate pollution;
• Save America 4 billion barrels of oil;
• Save Americans $67 billion to $122 billion over the lifetime of vehicles when the standards are fully implemented.

*  (all numbers are total benefits from 2012-2025)

Clean Power Plan

The Clean Power Plan protects the health of our families and communities by curbing dangerous, climate-disrupting carbon pollution that is exacerbating extreme weather events, as well as reducing other harmful pollutants that contribute to dangerous smog and soot, causing heart attacks, respiratory illnesses, and even premature deaths. But Wheeler has proposed gutting the Clean Power Plan and replacing it with a Dirty Power Scam.

While the Clean Power Plan would prevent 3,600 premature deaths and 90,000 asthma attacks every year by 2030, Wheeler’s Dirty Power Scam lets coal-burning plants pollute our air with impunity. Wheeler's EPA even admits that the Dirty Power Scam would kill up to 1,600 people every year. It's linked to lung disease, asthma, and more.

The report also highlights the EPA’s “PFAS Leadership Summit” but despite community hearings that brought the heartbreaking testimonies of families with stories of cancer clusters in their neighborhoods and their own children facing chronic illness, the EPA has done nothing to address this toxic contaminant.

We know Andrew Wheeler is a dangerous threat to the health of our families and our air and water because he’s already shown that in his short time at the EPA and in his long career as a lobbyist for corporate polluters. This year in review proves it.