Energy Star, on the Trump administration’s target list, has a long history of helping consumers’ wallets and the planet

  Since the early 1990s, the small blue Energy Star label has appeared on millions of household appliances, electronics, and even buildings across the United States. But as the Trump administration considers terminating some or all of the program, it is worth a look at what exactly this government-backed label means, and why it has become one of the most recognizable environmental certifications in the country.

  Energy Star was launched by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in 1992 and later expanded in partnership with the Department of Energy with a simple goal: making it easier for consumers and businesses to choose energy-efficient products, helping them reduce energy use and save money, without sacrificing quality or performance.

How Trump’s ‘gold standard’ politicizes federal science

  The first time Donald Trump was president, the head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency developed a regulation known as the “science transparency” rule. The administration liked to call it the “secret science” rule.

  “Transparency” sounds positive, but this rule instead prevented the EPA from using some of the best available science to protect human health.

New EPA regulations target air, water, land and climate pollution from power plants, especially those that burn coal

  Electric power generation in the U.S. is shifting rapidly away from fossil fuels toward cleaner and lower-carbon sources. State clean energy targets and dramatic declines in the cost of renewable electricity are the most important reasons.

  But fossil fuel plants still generate 60% of the U.S. electricity supply, producing air, water, and land pollutants and greenhouse gases in the process. To reduce these impacts, the Environmental Protection Agency announced a suite of rules on April 25, 2024. They focus mainly on coal plants, the nation’s most-polluting electricity source.

Ohio v. EPA threatens the EPA’s ability to regulate air pollution nationwide

  On February 21, 2024, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments for an emergency petition to postpone implementing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) “good neighbor plan,” which is meant to protect downwind states from high levels of ozone pollution. Unusually, the court is holding oral argument in this matter even though it originates in the notorious emergency docket known as the “shadow docket.” Unlike in the traditional merits docket, cases heard in the shadow docket typically are decided without oral argument on a fast-tracked basis and often are procedural in nature. In Ohio v. EPA, the court has chosen to hear arguments to determine whether the good neighbor plan should be paused while litigation in the lower courts continues. A stay of the plan could allow upwind states to emit approximately 70,000 additional tons of smog-creating nitrous oxide by the peak of the 2026 summertime ozone season, causing up to 1,300 premature deaths and increased hospital visits for thousands of Americans with asthma or other respiratory problems each year. This case serves as another opportunity for this radical, right-wing Supreme Court to rule in favor of powerful industry polluters over the safety and welfare of the American people.

Pollution from coal power plants contributes to far more deaths than scientists realized, study shows

  Air pollution particles from coal-fired power plants are more harmful to human health than many experts realized, and it’s more than twice as likely to contribute to premature deaths as air pollution particles from other sources, new research demonstrates.

  In the study, published in the journal Science, colleagues and I mapped how U.S. coal power plant emissions traveled through the atmosphere, then linked each power plant’s emissions with death records of Americans over 65 years old on Medicare.

  Our results suggest that air pollutants released from coal power plants were associated with nearly half a million premature deaths of elderly Americans from 1999 to 2020.

Five ways the EPA can strengthen carbon standards for power plants

  Power plants are an enormous source of carbon pollution, producing more than 25 percent of the United States’ total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Now—backed by the transformative power of the new clean electricity investments of the Inflation Reduction Act, which also affirmed the strength of the Clean Air Act to tackle climate change—the Biden administration has a rare opportunity to set the first-ever carbon pollution emissions standards for fossil fuel-fired power plants.

Which state you live in matters for how well environmental laws protect your health

  Your child could go to gym class on Monday morning and play soccer on a field that was sprayed over the weekend with 2,4-D, a toxic weedkiller that has been investigated as possibly causing cancer. Alternatively, the school grounds may have been treated with a lower-toxicity weedkiller. Or maybe the grounds were managed with safe, nontoxic products and techniques.

  Which of these scenarios applies depends in large part on your state’s laws and regulations today – more so than federal regulations.

3 reasons US coal power is disappearing – and a Supreme Court ruling won’t save it

  The U.S. coal industry chalked up a couple of rare wins this summer. First the Supreme Court issued a ruling limiting the government’s ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. Then President Joe Biden’s climate plan stalled in Congress again.

  But while some specific threats to the industry have subsided, that doesn’t mean coal-fired power plants will make a comeback.

The Supreme Court has curtailed EPA’s power to regulate carbon pollution – and sent a warning to other regulators

  In a highly anticipated but not unexpected 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court ruled on June 30, 2022 that the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan exceeded the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s authority under the Clean Air Act.

  The ruling doesn’t take away the EPA’s power to regulate carbon emissions from power plants, but it makes federal action harder by requiring the agency to show that Congress has charged it to act – in an area where Congress has consistently failed to act.

The oil industry says it might support a carbon tax – here’s why that could be good for producers and the public alike

  The oil industry’s lobbying arm, the American Petroleum Institute, suggested in a new draft statement that it might support Congress putting a price on carbon emissions to combat climate change even though oil and gas are major sources of those greenhouse gas emissions.

  An industry calling for a tax on the use of its products sounds as bizarre as “man bites dog.” Yet, there’s a reason for the oil industry to consider that shift.

Biden has pledged to advance environmental justice – here’s how the EPA can start

  On his first day in office, President Joe Biden started signing executive orders to reverse Trump administration policies. One sweeping directive calls for stronger action to protect public health and the environment and hold polluters accountable, including those who “disproportionately harm communities of color and low-income communities.”

  To lead this effort, Biden has nominated Michael Regan to head the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Regan, who currently heads North Carolina’s Department of Environmental Quality, would be the first Black man to serve as EPA Administrator in the agency’s 50-year history. His appointment has fueled expectations that the agency will make environmental justice a top priority.

On environmental protection, Biden’s election will mean a 180-degree turn from Trump policies

  The Trump administration has waged what I and many other legal experts view as an all-out assault on the nation’s environmental laws for the past four years. Decisions at the Environmental Protection Agency, the Interior Department, and other agencies have weakened the guardrails that protect our nation’s air, water, and public lands and have sided with industry rather than advocating for public health and the environment.

4 ways the Trump administration has made our air dirtier during the COVID-19 pandemic

  While the novel coronavirus has raged across the United States, infecting more than 1 million Americans, the Trump administration has failed catastrophically in its efforts to protect the public. One of these myriad failures has come in the form of continued rollbacks of critical protections for clean air across the country.

Congress must do more to counter Trump administration’s assault on climate science

  Since taking office, President Donald Trump and his administration have threatened to dismantle the federal climate apparatus. Earlier this year, the White House released a budget proposal for fiscal year 2020 that repeats many of the cuts to federal climate science proposed in Trump’s previous fiscal year budgets. At some agencies, proposed cuts to climate science far outstrip proposed reductions to the agency overall; according to Center for American Progress analysis of the FY 2020 Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Budget in Brief and the FY 2020 EPA budget justification, for instance, the Trump administration proposed an 11 percent cut to the U.S. Department of Energy’s overall budget but a 47 percent reduction in its climate science-related activities.

Five ways Wheeler is dirtying our water

  In a recent interview, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Andrew Wheeler said that access to clean drinking water across the globe is “the biggest environmental threat.”

  However, these empty words represent the extent of Wheeler’s effort to support clean water. In reality, Wheeler’s countless actions show that the former coal lobbyist has actively dirtied our water. Since he stepped into the acting EPA administrator role in July of 2018 after the scandal-ridden tenure of Scott Pruitt, Wheeler has done nothing but maintain his predecessor’s dirty agenda.

Debunking the Trump administration’s new water rule

  In February, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released its revised “Waters of the United States” (WOTUS) rule. The proposed rule dramatically restricts what falls under the purview of the Clean Water Act, the environmental law that has led to the cleanup of thousands of rivers and lakes in the United States. The U.S. Geological Survey has estimated that the rule would remove federal protections for 18 percent of stream and river miles and 51 percent of wetlands in the United States, putting protections at their lowest levels since the Reagan administration and leaving millions of Americans vulnerable to polluted water.

David Bernhardt is President Trump’s most conflicted Cabinet nominee

  On the whole, President Donald Trump’s Cabinet has not demonstrated integrity, honesty, or accountability to the American public. Four top Trump administration officials have resigned under a cloud of corruption after wasting taxpayer dollars or abusing their position for personal gain: U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Tom Price; Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt; U.S. Secretary of Veteran Affairs David Shulkin; and U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke.

  Rather than cleaning house in the wake of these controversies and resignations, President Trump is doubling down on nominating conflicted individuals to his Cabinet. In February, the U.S. Senate confirmed former coal lobbyist Andrew Wheeler as Pruitt’s replacement at the EPA, the federal agency that enforces air and water protections. And this month, Trump nominated David Bernhardt to lead the U.S. Department of the Interior. Currently serving as the acting interior secretary since Zinke’s departure, Bernhardt is a former oil and gas lobbyist—and has so many conflicts of interest that he must carry around a list of former clients to remember them.

Trump administration’s proposed MATS rollback is a direct attack on women and children

  This week, the Trump administration plans to take initial steps to allow power plants to spew toxic mercury and other hazardous pollution into the air, threatening the health of the American public. Like so many of the Trump administration’s rollbacks, this proposed change to undo the existing Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS) comes with devastating health impacts for pregnant women and children. For this reason, the rollback has been criticized by many and is even opposed by a coalition of utilities and union groups.

  Worst of all, rolling back the MATS is likely to have a disproportionately negative impact on pregnant women and children—in particular, those living in communities located near coal- and oil-fired power plants. Furthermore, data show that people of color and people with disabilities are more likely to live in these communities, further increasing the health disparities that exist between these groups and the general population. Mercury exposure has been linked to severe damage to the lungs, brain, and other organs, and those who are exposed often later experience developmental disorders.

Toxic EPA appointees spell conflict for public health safeguards

  Since taking over as acting administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in June 2018, Andrew Wheeler has followed in the footsteps of disgraced former Administrator Scott Pruitt—especially when it comes to prioritizing polluting industries over Americans’ health and well-being. Across the EPA, many former chemical industry insiders have been placed in charge of programs that are meant to protect American communities. Wheeler, for example, previously lobbied for chemical companies and is now directly involved in decisions about a massive Superfund site in New York and New Jersey for which two of his former clients are responsible.

Rollback of EPA clean car standards will cost you at least $500 a year

  On August 2, the Trump administration proposed rolling back the clean car standards, Obama-era regulations that require new cars for model years 2017-2025 to average more than 50 miles per gallon by 2025. In addition to the environmental impact that has already been reported by the New York Times and the Washington Post—which could be massive, since cars and trucks account for 45 percent of U.S. oil consumption and 20 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions—this rollback will be expensive for the American public.