'Proudly Fixing This Stupid Feature': Obama-Era Regulation Gets Axed by Trump Admin
In 2009, then-President Barack Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency conducted a number of studies that fundamentally changed how the country views climate change.
In fact, those 2009 environmental findings are “the legal underpinning of nearly all climate regulations under the Clean Air Act for motor vehicles,” according to The Associated Press.
More than 16 years later, President Donald Trump’s EPA is undoing much of it — and apparently, it’s at the behest of the American people.
The EPA sent shockwaves through the climate change community on Thursday when it announced that it is eliminating the “2009 Obama EPA Endangerment Finding,” according to Fox News.
The outlet reported that “The 2009 development was an EPA finding that carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and three other greenhouse gases ‘endanger the public health and welfare of current and future generations’ under the Clean Air Act — leading to a slew of new restrictions and regulations.”
One of those restrictions? Start-stop systems in vehicles.
Start-stop systems, or idle-stop, automatically shut off the engine when the vehicle comes to a complete stop — such as at traffic lights or in heavy traffic — and instantly restart it when the brake is released or the accelerator pressed.
And it’s a system that’s deeply unpopular, at least based on what EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin found while he was traveling through the country.
“As I traveled across all 50 states this past year, I heard from countless Americans who not only dislike the (motor-vehicle) start-stop feature but passionately advocated for this mechanism to be a thing of the past,” Zeldin said.
“Not only do many people find start-stop annoying, but it kills the battery of your car without any significant benefit to the environment,” he added. “The Trump EPA is proudly fixing this stupid feature at Trump Speed.”
Zeldin further argued that car manufacturers should neither be forced nor rewarded for including what he described as a “climate participation trophy” that had little bearing on the actual climate.
Meanwhile, U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy touted that removing this start-stop feature will actually lower manufacturing costs, bolstering Trump’s vow to help revitalize the auto industry.
This move will bring significant wholesale changes and deregulation.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt went so far as to call this decision “the largest deregulatory action in American history, and it will save the American people $1.3 trillion in crushing regulations.”
Climate activists are a bit more underwhelmed with this news than the Trump administration, perhaps unsurprisingly.
Ann Carlson, an environmental law professor at UCLA, told The Associated Press that this move would “raise more havoc” than any other action the Trump administration has taken with regard to climate policy.
Fox News added that climate change lawyers are looking forward to litigating these forthcoming changes.
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