All posts tagged: rollback

Environmental groups and states sue EPA over Trump’s emissions rollback

Environmental groups and states sue EPA over Trump’s emissions rollback

Last year, 7 million people around the world, 600,00 of them children, died from a slow-moving, silent and largely invisible killer: air pollution. In the U.S. alone, that number was 135,000 people, roughly the population of Dayton, Ohio. Poor air quality also accrues an economic cost of about $800 billion each year. And of course pollutants get trapped in the atmosphere, causing global heating and climate change that threatens to upend all life on the planet. Critics are now warning that deregulation at the federal level threatens to make this issue even worse. One of President Donald Trump’s very first acts in his second term was to repeal long-established environmental protections aimed at protecting public health and mitigating climate change. The Environmental Protection Agency’s decision to roll back the “endangerment finding,” which allowed the organization to regulate motor vehicle greenhouse gas emissions has drawn outrage from a panoply of parties. On March 19, 24 Democratic-majority states, plus D.C., the U.S. Virgin Islands and 12 cities and counties filed a lawsuit against the EPA, joining nearly …

Germany plans to give spies vast new powers in rollback of postwar restraints – POLITICO

Germany plans to give spies vast new powers in rollback of postwar restraints – POLITICO

“We want to continue working closely with the Americans,” Marc Henrichmann, the chairman of a special committee in Germany’s Bundestag that oversees the country’s intelligence services, told POLITICO. “But if a [U.S.] president, whoever that may be, decides in the future to go it alone without the Europeans … then we must be able to stand on our own two feet.” German leaders believe the need is especially urgent in their country, where the foreign intelligence service, or BND, is far more legally constrained than intelligence agencies elsewhere. Those restraints stem from intentional protections put in place after World War II to prevent a repeat of the abuses perpetrated by the Nazi spy apparatus. But those restraints have had the side effect of making Germany particularly dependent on the U.S. for intelligence gathering, and this is now seen as a potential danger. “The intelligence business is one where the question always arises: What do you offer me, what do I offer you?” Henrichmann said. “And of course, if Germany is only a taker, the risk is …

Dozens of Democrats call for halt to fuel efficiency standards rollback

Dozens of Democrats call for halt to fuel efficiency standards rollback

Dozens of Democratic lawmakers are calling on the Trump administration to halt a proposed rollback of vehicle mileage standards, warning that weakening the standards could have detrimental effects on fuel efficiency and Americans’ wallets and worsen climate change. The lawmakers argued in a Feb. 4 letter to Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy that the rollbacks would… Source link