Former President Donald Trump’s environmental agenda suffered two significant losses in court this week when federal judges overturned rules that would have hampered pollution control.
On Wednesday, a federal judge blocked a rule passed in the last days of the Trump administration that would have limited the use of so-called “secret science”, a term used by conservatives to refer to data kept confidential due to patient privacy concerns. . in the regulation of pollutants by the Environmental Protection Agency.
And on Friday, a panel of three judges in the Washington, DC circuit court abolished rules that loosened the implementation of EPA ozone standards under the Clean Air Act, as the panel concluded that Trump-era policy “Infringed[s] the unambiguous language of the statute “and” is based on an irrational interpretation of the statute “.
The first case depended on when the rule changed – it was launched on January 6 under former EPA administrator Andrew Wheeler, himself a former coal lobbyist. Wheeler argued that the rule would increase transparency, ensuring that public health policy is based on data that can be reviewed by everyone.
But critics of the rule said it would limit the power of agencies like the EPA to protect public health, as much of the agency’s science depends on jobs that include confidential patient data that cannot be legally made available to the public.
For example, a major Harvard study from 1993, which found direct links between exposure to pollutants and death rates, for years formed the basis for EPA regulation on fine particles. But because that study used anonymous health data, Trump’s rule would have prevented him, and any similar studies, from being used to create regulations.
On Wednesday, US District Judge Brian Morris, appointed by Obama in Montana, sided with critics of the rule, saying the Trump administration’s decision to approve the rule two weeks before Trump stepped down was “capricious” .
He ordered the implementation of the rule to be postponed until February 5 so that President Joe Biden’s government could assess whether to proceed with the rule or not.
In Friday’s case, three judges from the United States Court of Appeals to Washington, DC – Judges Harry Edwards, David Tatel and Gregory Katsas, appointed by former Presidents Carter, Clinton and Trump, respectively – found that parts of the rules Relaxing ozone regulations were not legal.
The rules, adopted in 2015 and 2018, allowed polluters and employees flexibility in complying with ozone regulations under the Federal Clean Air Act. A major change in the rules gave polluters a little leeway in the production of compounds that act as precursors to ozone, which can be toxic. This rule allowed polluters to exchange the emission of a given ozone precursor for another known ozone precursor. Two other rules allowed states flexibility in meeting ozone requirements, and a fourth gave areas that did not meet ozone mitigation limits to cover the consequences if they showed that they had a plan to meet those goals.
Environmental groups that brought challenges to each of these provisions, which included the Sierra Club and Earthjustice, called these changes “gaps”.
Biden pledged to undo Trump’s environmental policy
The Trump administration has reversed nearly 100 environmental protections in just four years. During the campaign, Biden promised to reverse many of these actions and spent part of his early days in office doing so, using executive orders.
As Ella Nilsen of Vox reported:
On Wednesday, Biden signed a set of executive actions to start implementing that plan. In them, he directed his government to adopt a “government-wide approach” to combat climate change, which includes – among other initiatives – ordering federal agencies to buy pollution-free electricity, as well as zero-emission vehicles, and instructing the US Department of the Interior to halt new oil and natural gas leases on public or offshore land.
These new orders come at the top of Biden’s first day executive actions to re-adhere to the Paris climate deal and direct his agencies to reverse a series of actions by former President Trump that cut environmental regulations and emissions standards.
Biden signaled that climate policy will also be a centerpiece of his economic agenda.
“Biden’s economic agenda is his climate agenda; your climate agenda is your economic agenda, ”said Sam Ricketts – co-founder of Evergreen climate policy group and senior researcher at the Center for American Progress – told Nilsen.
In the short term, that means finding ways to create new jobs, according to the president. And that focus was on one of the executive orders he signed Wednesday, which, among other initiatives, directed his government to investigate ways to convert fossil fuel hubs into communities centered on renewable energy.