At a Glance

Since the beginning of March, the administration has:Lowered fuel economy and emissions standards for the auto industry.Loosened enforcement of some compliance regulations for businesses.Clarified a proposed rule that would tighten parameters on research the agency uses to inform its decisions and rule-making.

The Trump administration has not allowed a global pandemic to delay its plans to push environmental rollbacks.

Since the beginning of March, the administration , and clarified a .

Emission Standards

The new rule would negate a 2012 policy requiring automakers’ fleets to average around 54 miles per gallon by 2025, bringing that down to 40 mpg. In plain terms, the change would yield almost a billion more tons of carbon dioxide to be pumped out by the vehicles affected by the rule and 80 billion more gallons of gasoline consumed, New York Magazine .

Written in conjunction between the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Department of Transportation, the rule is set to be implemented before the summer.

The policy’s detractors fear that these moves will cause an increase in gas consumption, which would increase air pollution and inadvertently kill hundreds of Americans annually.

“They’re pursuing a policy that’s going to hurt public health and kill people,” Chet France, a former EPA official who oversaw emissions and mileage standards, . “This is the first time that an administration has pursued a policy that will net negative benefit for society and reduce fuel savings.”

Compliance

The EPA issued a of its enforcement of environmental laws at the end of March by alerting companies they would not need to meet environmental standards during the coronavirus outbreak. In fact, the policy broadly states that businesses suffering from COVID-19 related difficulties would not have to adhere to compliance standards.

Any number of industries could use this rollback to exploit the environment for profit.

The blanket relaxation is repeatedly referred to by the EPA as a temporary measure, but no end date for the policy has been determined. The agency has said it will not “seek penalties for noncompliance with routine monitoring and reporting obligations.”

Writing in a to The Hill, Cynthia Giles, who headed the EPA’s Office of Enforcement during the Obama administration, called it a moratorium on enforcing the nation's environmental laws and an abdication of the agency's duty.

“This EPA statement is essentially a nationwide waiver of environmental rules for the indefinite future. It tells companies across the country that they will not face enforcement even if they emit unlawful air and water pollution in violation of environmental laws, so long as they claim that those failures are in some way 'caused' by the virus pandemic. And it allows them an out on monitoring too, so we may never know how bad the violating pollution was.”

Research Limitations

Another pending EPA change is a regulation that would limit the types of scientific studies that the agency can use when writing new or revising existing public health policies.

The proposal could allow for the EPA to give less weight or completely reject studies that do not make underlying data publicly available so the research can be independently replicated, .

The EPA has argued “that science used to make regulations requires greater transparency,” according to the New York Times. However, almost every major scientific group has opposed the rule because it would compromise their ability to do their jobs. Key fields of research— like linking air pollution and premature death— utilize personal health information from study subjects, who agree to participate in studies on the express condition that their data is kept confidential. Without that trust, the amount of people willing to participate in studies would dramatically decrease.

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The aggressive timeline is aimed at shielding the policies from easy reversal if Democrats win the White House or control of the Senate in the 2020 election. While it is hardly unusual to see a push to finalize policies toward the end of an administration, several agency officials said they were surprised that political leaders had shown no sign of letting up amid the pandemic.”

These moves by the federal government come alongside several states against the fossil fuel industry, similar to the now famous Dakota-Access Pipeline protest style.