Former President Donald Trump’s environmental agenda suffered two significant losses in court this week because federal judges lifted rules that would complicate the regulation of pollution.
On Wednesday, a federal judge blocked a rule in the last days of the Trump administration that would have restricted the use of so-called ‘secret science’, a term used by conservatives to refer to data kept confidential due to problems with the privacy of the patient, in the regulation of pollution by the Environmental Protection Agency.
And on Friday, a panel of three judges in Washington, DC’s circuit court abolished rules that weakened the EPA’s implementation of ozone standards under the Clean Air Act, as the panel found that Trump’s policies ‘were in conflict’ with[s] the unambiguous language of the law, ”and“ is based on an unreasonable interpretation of the law. ”
The first case depends on the timing of the rule change – it was introduced on January 6 under former EPA administrator Andrew Wheeler, himself a former coal lobbyist. Wheeler argued that the rule would increase transparency by ensuring that public health policy is based on data that can be reviewed by all.
But critics of the rule said it would limit the power of agencies such as the EPA to protect public health, as much of the agency’s science relies on work containing confidential patient data that cannot legally be made public.
For example, a 1993 historical Harvard study, directly related to exposure to pollution and mortality rates, has been the basis of the EPA’s regulation of fine particles for years. But because that study used anonymous health data, the Trump rule would have banned it and all similar studies from drafting regulations.
On Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Brian Morris, a nominated Obama in Montana, spoke out against the critics of the government, saying that the Trump administration’s decision to run for office two weeks before Trump left office was “volatile.” ‘is.
He ordered that the implementation of the rule be delayed until February 5, so that the government of President Joe Biden could assess whether it should continue with the rule.
In the Friday case, three judges in the U.S. Court of Appeals for Washington, DC – Judges Harry Edwards, David Tatel and Gregory Katsas, appointed by former presidents Carter, Clinton and Trump respectively, ruled that parts of the rules that relax the ozone regulations , was not legal.
The rules, adopted in 2015 and 2018, gave polluters and officials flexibility to comply with ozone regulations under federal clean air law. One important rule change has given pollutants room for the production of compounds that serve as precursors of ozone, which can be toxic. This rule allowed pollutants to exchange the emission of a given ozone precursor with another known ozone precursor. Two other rules made states flexibly enable ozone requirements to be met, and a fourth area covered areas that could not meet the ozone depletion thresholds due to consequences if it appeared they had a plan to reach the targets.
Environmental groups that have brought challenges to each of these provisions, including the Sierra Club and Earthjustice, call the changes ‘loopholes’.
Biden has promised to undo Trump’s environmental policy
The Trump administration has turned back nearly 100 environmental protections in just four years. On the campaign, Biden promised to reverse many of these actions, and spent part of his first days in office using executive orders.
As Ella Nilsen from Vox reports:
On Wednesday, Biden signed a series of executive actions that would make the plan a reality. In them, he instructed his government to take a “government approach” to combating climate change, which includes, among other things – ordering federal agencies to buy electricity without pollution, as well as vehicles without emissions, and the US Department of State. instruct Home Affairs to interrupt the lease of oil and natural gas leases on public lands or foreign lands.
These new orders come in addition to Biden’s day-one executive action to rejoin the Paris Climate Agreement and order its agencies to reverse a number of former President Trump’s actions, which weaken environmental regulations and emissions standards.
Biden has indicated that climate policy will also be at the heart of its economic agenda.
“Biden’s economic agenda is its climate agenda; his climate agenda is his economic agenda, ”Sam Ricketts – co-founder of the Evergreen climate policy group and a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress think tank – told Nilsen.
In the short term, according to the president, this means ways of creating new jobs. And the focus was seen in one of the executive orders he signed on Wednesday, which instructed his government, among other things, to explore ways to convert hubs of fossil fuels into communities focused on renewable energy.