EPA science advisors set to challenge Trump on auto emissions

[babylonsister]

EPA science advisors set to challenge Trump on auto emissions
Experts are worried the rollback runs counter to the agency's own findings.
E.A. Crunden
May 29, 2018, 12:02 pm


Science advisors for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) could vote to review the agency’s reasoning for rolling back automobile efficiency requirements as early as this week amid internal concerns that such a rollback runs counter to EPA findings. That move would serve as an internal rebuke to the Trump administration’s ongoing efforts to relax Obama-era climate efforts.

An eight-member working group within the EPA’s Science Advisory Board (SAB) has indicated it will rebuke the agency over several recent environmental decisions, including a conclusion that auto efficiency standards introduced under President Obama’s administration are too stringent.

In a May 18 memo, Alison Cullen, chair of the SAB Work Group on EPA Planned Actions for SAB Consideration of the Underlying Science, wrote that the working group wants the broader 44-member SAB to assess that decision.

“The Chartered SAB will discuss whether to review the adequacy of the science supporting planned regulatory actions” at its May 31, 2018 meeting, she wrote.

The memo goes on to highlight that the EPA’s conclusion in April that emissions standards were too stringent seems to have failed to weigh the public health and climate change implications that such a rollback could spur. Moreover, the working group said, a lack of peer review and the rushed nature of such decisions is cause for concern, especially in light of pre-existing EPA findings on the impact of carbon dioxide emissions.

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https://thinkprogress.org/science-advisors-epa-trump-auto-emissions-5d5b3579afc9/