The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Proposes Repealing Limits on Mercury and Carbon

The Trump Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed repealing the key rule which limits power plant emissions of mercury and other toxic pollutants. These substances harm the brain development of young children and contribute to heart attacks and other health problems in adults. The EPA also proposed repealing limits on emissions of planet-heating greenhouse gases from power plants burning coal or gas.

Effect on Communities 

If approved and finalized, these changes would reverse much of the progress made by the Biden Administration addressing the key sources of climate change. Moreover, they would overturn environmental justice efforts to improve conditions in areas heavily burdened by industrial pollution, mostly in low-income and majority Black or Hispanic communities. Environmental and public health groups called the reversals serious threats to the public, and vowed to fight them in court. “President Trump and EPA administrator Zeldin continue to bow to their Big Polluter and billionaire allies’ wishes to weaken critical safeguards, cutting short the lives of tens of thousands of people each year and endangering our children’s developing brains,” declared Matthew Davis, League of Conservation Voters (LCV) Vice President of Federal Policy and a former EPA scientist.

“It doesn’t have to be this way — technologies to reduce the health-harming mercury and toxic air pollution and climate-threatening carbon pollution from dirty coal and gas power plants already exist and are currently installed and running. The Trump-Vance administration is giving away our children’s future to deliver more sweetheart deals to Big Polluters and their billionaire buddies. We will fight back against these unpopular, dangerous schemes that do not follow the science or law and put polluters above people.”

“Ignoring the immense harm to public health from power plant pollution is a clear violation of the law,’’ said Manish Bapna, president and CEO of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). “If EPA finalizes a slapdash effort to repeal those rules, we’ll see them in court.”

False Claims by the EPA

The Associated Press (AP) asked 30 different scientists and experts in climate, health, and economics, about the scientific validity of the EPA’s proposed conclusion that heat-trapping carbon dioxide “emissions from fossil fuel-fired power plants do not contribute significantly to dangerous air pollution.” Nineteen responded, all of whom said that the proposed conclusion was scientifically wrong. Many of them described it as disinformation. 

“This is the scientific equivalent to saying that smoking doesn’t cause lung cancer,” said climate scientist Zeke Hausfather of the tech firm Stripe and the temperature monitoring group Berkeley Earth. “The relationship between CO2 emissions and global temperatures has been well established since the late 1800s, and coal burning is the single biggest driver of global CO2 emissions, followed by oil and gas. It is utterly nonsensical to say that carbon emissions from power plants do not contribute significantly to climate change.”

“It’s about as valid as saying that arsenic is not a dangerous substance to consume,” said University of Pennsylvania climate scientist Michael Mann.

The Bottom Line

“As reported, these proposals would allow fossil fuel power plants to pour more pollution into our air—putting the health, safety and well-being of all Americans at risk. They would lead to more illnesses, which in turn would mean more days missing school and work, more visits to doctors and hospitalizations, and increased medical costs,” said Vickie Patton, General Counsel of the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF). “Power plants are among the largest sources of dangerous pollution in the nation. We have modern technologies that allow these plants to reduce pollution with available and cost-effective solutions.”