The Trump Administration’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is planning to cook the books of its health impact calculations in order to hide the deaths which will result from unchecked climate change.
As part of Trump’s crusade to deny climate science and serve his fossil fuel industry sponsors, his appointees are seeking to eliminate the Clean Power Plan, the Obama-era rule requiring the cleanup of air pollution from power plants. Inconveniently for this push, initial analysis showed that the EPA proposal would result in an additional 1,400 premature deaths from air pollution every year.
Faced with an inconvenient truth from honest science, the Trump appointees are reacting as usual: jiggling the numbers until they get a less embarrassing result. Their proposed new methodology would include the scientifically unsound assumption that there is no health benefit from improving air quality beyond the maximum pollution levels allowed by law. In fact, medical experts tell us that there is no “safe” level of fine particulate pollution such as coal soot. The lower their atmospheric level, the better it is for avoiding additional heart attacks, strokes, and respiratory illnesses.
States, local governments, health groups, and environmental advocates are all continuing to fight the Trump Administration’s plans to re-dirty our air in the service of the coal and oil industries.
To get news like this in your inbox every Monday, please sign up for our Conservation Insider Bulletin newsletter!
