October 26, 2018 \u2013 Today, the Emmett Clinic submitted comments opposing the Environmental Protection Agency and National Highway Transportation Safety Administration\u2019s Safer Affordable Fuel-Efficient Vehicles Rule.\u00a0 This rule would freeze greenhouse gas emission and fuel economy standards for cars and light trucks, thereby undermining one of the main pillars of U.S. efforts to address climate change.<\/p>\n
The comments focus on the agencies\u2019 misleading discussion of the proposal\u2019s impact on climate change.\u00a0 Even though the U.S. transportation sector is responsible for 28% of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, the agencies dismiss the climate impacts of their proposal to freeze the emissions standards from 2021 to 2026 as \u201csmall.\u201d\u00a0 The comments spell out how the climate impacts projected in the agencies\u2019 own draft Environmental Impact Statement portend significant, adverse harms to public health, the economy, and the natural world; that the scientific consensus points to the immediate and ongoing need for continuing, incremental reductions in GHG emissions across all sectors of the U.S. economy; and that even if the Proposal\u2019s impacts were properly characterized as \u201csmall,\u201d even small increases in GHG emissions can have major impacts.<\/p>\n
The Clinic filed the comments on its own behalf and on behalf of Professor Michael Oppenheimer, Director of Princeton University\u2019s Program in Science, Technology, and Environmental Policy and lead author for the Fourth and Fifth Assessment Reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and Dr. Philip Duffy, President and Executive Director of the Woods Hole Research Center.<\/p>\n