A nonprofit group helping state attorneys generals fight Trump’s deregulatory agenda said Tuesday that the administration’s rollbacks of environment rules would raise carbon emissions by nearly 200 metric tons annually, costing hundreds of billions of dollars in public health damages.
New York Attorney General Letitia James, Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey, and Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh — all Democrats who have sued the Trump administration over environmental issues — hosted a press conference in Washington D.C. to tout a new report meant to bolster their case against the rollbacks.
“As the Trump Administration continues to advance policies that will cause even greater harm to our resources and our health, it is up to state attorneys general to lead the fight to stop these policies and protect Americans,” James said. “I am proud that New York is leading the charge to challenge this backwards agenda.”
The report, produced by the State Energy & Environment Impact Center at New York University, focused on six proposed Trump administration rules, which federal agencies are expected to finalize this year.
The Trump administration argues its deregulatory actions would result in significant cost savings to industry. But, the new report says “the cost savings to industry are minuscule in comparison to the public costs of these rollbacks.”
The major policies in question include the Environmental Protection Agency’s effort to weaken former President Obama’s two signature climate change regulations: His strict fuel efficiency standards for cars and light trucks, which were set to steadily rise through 2026, and the Clean Power Plan that was set to limit carbon emissions from power plants.
They also include the Trump administration’s proposed softening of an EPA rule targeting methane leaks from oil and gas drillers and fracking operations, and another related move weakening a 2016 Interior Department regulation targeting venting and flaring, or burning, of methane from oil and gas operations on federal lands. Methane, the main component in natural gas, is more potent than carbon dioxide because it traps more heat, although its greenhouse gas emissions are relatively short-lived in the atmosphere.
The report highlighted, as an example of a rollback costing the public more than it saves the industry, the Trump administration’s proposal to freeze fuel efficiency standards. The report said that the change would cost American drivers between $193 and $236 billion dollars in added fuel expenses by 2035, because of increased oil use, in addition to eliminating as much as $18 billion in climate and public health benefits each year.
The report said EPA’s effort to replace the Clean Power Plan with a narrower, modest rule would generate increases in conventional air pollutants that could lead to 1,630 premature deaths and 120,000 additional asthma attacks by 2030.
The rolling back of the EPA’s methane emissions standards for leaks from new and existing oil and gas drilling operations would add costs of $170 million by 2025 in the form of forgone net benefits, and cause 1,900 premature deaths because of increased pollution.
Interior’s weakening of the “venting and flaring” rule, meanwhile, would cost the public $203 million in foregone environmental and economic benefits by 2026 and $824 million in lost cost savings by 2028.
The attorneys general group says that collectively the Trump administration’s rollback actions are “disregarding states’ rights” to set tougher environmental rules. It cites as an example the Trump administration’s proposal to revoke a waiver allowing California to set stricter fuel efficiency rules, which more than a dozen other states follow.
The group also contends the Trump administration’s approach violates a government legal finding, upheld by the Supreme Court, that says carbon dioxide is a pollutant endangering public health that the EPA should regulate under the Clean Air Act.
“These proposals would either return emissions to previous levels or increase them even further,” the report said.
Democratic attorneys general have already been successful in court, with judges finding the Trump administration has not always followed proper legal procedures and laws to unwind regulations and has failed to justify its actions with science-based facts, as required by the Administrative Procedures Act.
Since those successes, the former leaders of EPA and Interior, Scott Pruitt and Ryan Zinke, have been replaced by administrators steeped in rulemaking experience at the agencies, Andrew Wheeler and David Bernhardt, who are more careful in their approach.
But the Democratic attorneys general expressed confidence they would continue to prevail as Wheeler, at EPA, and Bernhardt, at Interior, finalize what their predecessors started.
“The original leaders of EPA and Interior were perhaps more eccentric than their successors, but the work they are doing is potentially more destructive and has been done in a slap-dash fashion and equally vulnerable to attack,” said Frosh, the Maryland attorney general. “We expect to challenge them and continue to be successful.”
