This article discusses the EPA efforts to roll back the Clean Power Plan and weaken auto standards and other regulations. This action was done by the EPA Science Advisory Board, which has more than a dozen a Pruitt-appointed EPA scientists.
The Environmental Protection Agency’s Science Advisory Board, in a rebuke to the Trump administration’s retreat on environmental protection, voted overwhelmingly Thursday in favor of a full board review of the agency’s most important actions to dismantle climate policy.
EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, who appointed about 15 members of the 44-member board, now must decide whether to accept its recommendation that the outside scientific experts be allowed to formally vet his decisions.
With only two members dissenting, the Science Advisory Board agreed that it had received insufficient information on the science behind several of Pruitt’s decisions—including his planned repeal of the Clean Power Plan and methane regulations on oil and gas operations, the weakening of auto efficiency and greenhouse gas emissions standards, and the elimination of a rule to curb truck pollution. The board also backed a full review of a revised “social cost of carbon” cost-benefit analysis EPA is using that essentially wipes out the benefits of actions to curb carbon emissions.