My Climate Change News

If one single thing about the election keeps state environmental regulators up at night, it’s how much a Trump victory would impact their ability to cut transportation emissions. As it turns out, Trump’s leverage would be reduced, ironically enough, because his conservative Supreme Court appointees helped overrule the Chevron doctrine. Trump can still cause a lot of very harmful chaos, but ultimately the courts will make their own decision about state emission standards. With Chevron gone, Trump’s views will carry less weight with a court.

It’s true that the ability of states to limit carbon emissions from vehicles is crucial to their climate pans. Transportation is now the largest source of carbon emissions, accounting for 28% of total U.S. emissions. Reducing those emissions is crucial achieving the climate targets of states like California, New York, and Illinois. A key part of these plans is copying California’s tailpipe emission standards, which are stricter than the federal level. Trump promises to block California’s standards.

How Trump might do this requires some explanation. When Congress passed the Clean Air Act in 1970, it set tough pollution standards for new cars. It also prohibited states from regulating vehicle tailpipe emissions — but with one major exception. Because of LA’s uniquely bad air pollution and the state’s track record in regulating vehicle pollution, EPA can waive preemption for California if certain conditions are met. A later amendment allows other states to adopt copy California regulations.

This has been a very partisan issue. Republicans (Bush and Trump) rejected the waiver for greenhouse gases and Democrats (Obama and Biden). granted it. Trump has made it clear he would cancel it again if he’s reelected. The question is how much effect this would have, given that any such action would have to be cleared by the courts. To answer that, we must look at the three arguments Trump’s EPA would use...