The pandemic has not stalled the Trump administration's race to dismantle environmental regulations
of a global pandemic of covid-19, a respiratory illness, a sensible time for America to roll back air-pollution regulations? The White House seems to think so. On April 16th the Environmental Protection Agency issued a final recommendation that it was no longer “appropriate and necessary” to regulate the emissions of mercury and other toxins from coal- and oil-fired power plants. Though existing limits remain in place for now, they could well be challenged in court and struck down.
Though the two actions represent a continuation of Donald Trump’s effort to unravel existing environmental regulations of all kinds, the rush now may be prompted by a more concrete concern: a somewhat arcane law known as the Congressional Review Act. This allows Congress to revoke recently issued regulations without going through the typically lengthy bureaucratic fuss. Before Mr Trump’s presidency, the rule had been used just once before.
Any new regulations—including repeals—must be rigorously costed, or else they risk being overturned in the courts. The environmental rules that the Trump administration is rewriting were signed just a few years ago. Their costings then showed social benefits vastly exceeding the compliance costs. To show the opposite now, the Trump administration is employing funny maths. The direct benefits of mercury-pollution reduction are counted very narrowly , while the side benefits of pollution controls are not counted. Similar head-scratching assumptions plague the justifications for reduced car-emissions standards. In both cases the’s own scientific advisory board wrote long critiques of the methodologies used, which seem to have been roundly ignored.
Carmakers have tepidly welcomed the reduced fuel-economy standards, which will oblige cars to become 1.5% more efficient each year instead of 5%. Electricity utilities have ranged from receptive to outright hostile to the mercury-rule decision—in part because they have already implemented the costly pollution controls.maintains should not be considered, are also of unfortunately topical importance.
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