Press Release  AG Healey to Sue Trump Administration Over Rollback of Clean Car Standards

BOSTON — Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey today issued the following statement pledging to sue the Trump Administration over its illegal and environmentally destructive final rule rolling back federal limits on tailpipe pollution from cars and trucks.

“With no legitimate scientific, economic, or environmental justification whatsoever, the Trump Administration is throwing away standards that would improve air quality in Massachusetts and across the country and save drivers tens of billions of dollars at the pump. This rollback — which is solely to benefit the fossil fuel industry — will put our residents at serious risk at a time when public health is already threatened and will increase the rising costs of climate change for our communities. We will join our partner states and take the Trump Administration to court to fight another illegal and dangerous rollback.”

BACKGROUND:

Globally, the transportation sector is the fastest growing source of dangerous greenhouse gas pollution. Cars and light duty trucks account for nearly 60 percent of the country’s transportation sector emissions and are the main driver of U.S. dependence on oil, including foreign imports. In Massachusetts, the transportation sector is the single largest source of greenhouse gas emissions. 

Massachusetts is one of 12 states that have adopted California’s stricter standards for greenhouse gas emissions from cars and trucks.

The Trump Administration’s final rule adopts a mere 1.5 percent per year increase in fuel economy standards, abandoning the 2012 rule’s five percent per year increase through 2025.  As a result, greenhouse gas emissions will increase by nearly a billion tons over the life of vehicles built during the term of the rule.

On August 2, 2018 — the day the Trump Administration announced its proposed rollback — AG Healey led a coalition of 19 states and the District of Columbia in releasing a joint statement announcing an intent to sue the Administration over the rollback.

In October 2018, AG Healey joined 20 other attorneys general and five cities in submitting comments, demanding that the Trump Administration withdraw its proposal to roll back the federal Clean Car Standards. The attorneys general argued that the proposal disregarded warnings from the scientific community that weakening the standards will aggressively accelerate global warming and lead to temperature increases, ocean warming, sea level rise, increased hospitalizations, and more extreme weather events.

AG Healey is part of a coalition of 24 attorneys general and two cities that sued both the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration over their attempts to preempt California’s and other states’ emissions standards.

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