Here is an except from an op-ed in CNN by Patagonia’s Environmental Advocate, Avi Garbow. Read the full piece here.
While our nation reels from the coronavirus pandemic, the Trump administration is accelerating a harmful agenda -- rollbacks that dismantle critical health and environmental protections, and that will surely deepen the climate crisis.
Just days after the United States surpassed all other countries in the number of confirmed coronavirus cases, Trump officials finalized their rollback of the Obama administration's clean car standards, a mandate that forced automakers to make cars substantially more fuel efficient. By 2040, according to analysis by the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), this rollback of the clean car standards is expected to add 1.5 billion metric tons of climate pollution into the atmosphere, an amount equal to the total pollution from 68 coal-fired power plants operating for five years, and cost Americans more than $244 billion in excess fuel charges.
Another study by the BlueGreen Alliance estimates that nearly 90,000 jobs could be lost as a result of this rollback.