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Court Must Overturn Trump’s Effort to Gut Clean Cars Standards

Statement of Robert Weissman, President, Public Citizen

Note: Today, Public Citizen and 11 other groups filed legal actions in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit seeking to overturn rules issued by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) that weaken greenhouse gas emissions regulations and fuel economy standards applicable to automobiles and other light vehicles. California and other states also filed legal challenges to the rules in the same court earlier today. The petitions joined by Public Citizen are here. A joint press release by the groups filing the litigation is here.

The Trump administration’s disgraceful efforts to gut the nation’s clean cars standards will cost consumers billions at the gas pump and set back the all-important effort to stem a global climate catastrophe.

The EPA and NHTSA have turned away from their roles as protectors of the environment and consumers to serve a mindless deregulatory agenda. Even the agencies’ rigged cost-benefit analysis couldn’t fudge the numbers enough to show any benefit to society from reducing fuel economy and increasing greenhouse gas emissions and other pollutants. The clean cars rollback epitomizes the administration’s lawless and arbitrary disregard of requirements that agencies protect the public.

We expect that the courts will set aside this action and restore the critical protections provided by the clean cars standards that Trump’s EPA and NHTSA have so cavalierly eviscerated.