The Environmental Protection Agency is locking in the air pollution limits at their current levels ahead of the Biden administration’s takeover, looking to preserve business- and climate-saving choices made during Donald Trump’s presidency.
It is the second such move the Trump administration has taken in recent weeks. Earlier this month, EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler announced a decision to retain current standards for industrial soot pollution, despite calls from public health advocates and the agency’s scientists to tighten them.“This decision comes after careful review of the most current scientific evidence, risk, and exposure information, and after consultation with the agency’s independent science advisers,” Wheeler told reporters Wednesday of the decision to keep national air quality limits for ozone at their current levels. The Obama administration last tightened the ozone standards in 2015, from 75 parts per billion to 70 parts per billion, over objections from industry groups.Ground-level ozone is the primary contributor to smog, and it can cause trouble breathing, increase the frequency of asthma attacks, and damage lungs, according to the EPA.The actions to keep the air quality limits stagnant likely locks in the current levels for at least many months, if not several years, even if the Biden administration attempts to reverse course. The EPA is required to review national air quality limits for ozone, fine particle pollution, and other air pollutants every five years
This is a great decision that will benefit Americans. It appears that Biden’s pick to head the EPA believes that “environmental racism” is real.
President-elect Joe Biden will nominate Michael S. Regan, who heads the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality, as the next Environmental Protection Agency administrator, according to two people who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the decision has not yet been formally announced.Regan, 44, would be the first Black man to run the EPA.He would play a central role in realizing Biden’s promises to combat climate change, embrace green energy and address environmental racism. He also would be responsible for crafting fuel-efficiency standards for the nation’s cars and trucks, overseeing emissions from power plants and oil and gas facilities, and cleaning up the country’s most polluted sites.
Legal Insurrection readers may recall that a 2015 report detailing the cause of the Animas River environmental disaster resulting in the release of millions of gallons of heavy-metal containing wastewater into a scenic Colorado river blamed the EPA for the incident. The head of the agency at that time was environmental activist Gina McCarthy.
President-elect Joe Biden will name former EPA head Gina McCarthy as his domestic climate policy chief, placing one of the architects of Barack Obama’s climate regulatory efforts at the helm of his strategy to put the country on a path to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions, people familiar with the decision said.McCarthy, who will lead a new White House office of domestic climate policy, served as EPA’s air chief in Obama’s first term and as EPA administrator in his second. While there, she oversaw development of a suite of climate regulations — targeting greenhouse gases from cars and trucks, power plants, oil and gas producers and even landfills — that have been dismantled under the Trump administration.
Americans should probably prepare for more environmental disasters . . . at the hands of race-activists and green justice warriors.
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