Air

Democrats, mainstream environmental groups and equity organizations are redoubling their efforts to bridge long-standing divisions that seek to address both environmental justice concerns and climate change policy ahead of the 2020 election and possible legislation that could be advanced afterward.

The latest EPA air quality trends report is providing a vehicle for the Trump administration to cite decades of air quality improvements predating its tenure as a political antidote to criticism of its deregulatory agenda, even as observers are citing a number of details in the report itself that point to some more troubling recent pollution trends.

A free-market group is urging the Energy Department (DOE) to drop its use of the social cost of carbon (SCC) when developing appliance efficiency standards, though opponents of the Trump administration’s deregulatory agenda are already fighting agencies’ use of a narrowed approach to the SCC in court.

EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler and other administration officials say they will step up their deregulatory agendas in 2020 even after completing work on their top-priority rollbacks, with EPA moving on to “tier 2” rulemakings in addition to branch-wide “structural” changes aimed at making recent policy shifts more durable.