CALIFORNIA SUES TRUMP ADMINISTRATION TO PROTECT CLEAN AIR AND AUTO EMISSION STANDARDS

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By Miriam Raftery

May 2, 2018 (Sacramento) – California announced Tuesday that it will join 16 other states in a lawsuit against the Trump administration to stop Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Secretary Scott Pruitt from reversing fuel efficiency standards to protect clean air and reduce greenhouse gasses fueling climate change. 

Transportation is now the number one source of greenhouse gases in the U.S., the U.S. Energy Department concluded in a 2017 study.

“They want people to buy more gas, create more pollution. It’s hard to believe, but that’s the fact,” Governor Jerry Brown said at a press conference Tuesday.  “It’s not going to make America great, it’s going to make America second-rate and probably will jeopardize America’s auto industry.”

University of California, Davis, transportation professor Dan Sperling, who also serves on California’s Air Resources Board, agrees with Brown that if the Trump administration succeeds in blocking new emission standards, the U.S. will lose out to China and European countries that have adopted their own strict fuel efficiency standards and even set deadlines to ban sale of gas-powered vehicles completely, leading the way on developing zero-emission technologies.

“The U.S. is on the verge of ceding its leadership in the global auto industry,” Sperling says of the EPA efforts to rollback emission standards, Bloomberg News reports.

In the 1970s, in Brown’s first term as Governor, pollution in California was so bad that Los Angeles was shrouded in brown smog that obscured views and often sickened people.  This reporter once went for a walk on a smoggy day in L.A. and awoke to paramedics reviving me with oxygen after passing out from breathing the smoggy air.  Brown implemented the toughest air pollution standards and fuel efficiency rules in the nation – and they worked, relegating smog to a mostly distant memory.

California’s latest plan requires automakers to attain 55 miles a gallon average fuel efficiency by 2025. But the Trump wants to freeze efficiency levels at 42 miles per gallon, in response to oil and gas industry lobbying efforts.  The Trump administration has declined to comment on the lawsuit.

A poll by the Public Policy Institute of California shows that almost 75% of Californians surveyed support the state’s mandate to cut carbon dioxide emissions to 40 percent below 1990 levels by the year 2030.

EPA director Pruitt, a climate change denier, sued the EPA to weaken air pollution standards when he was attorney general for Oklahoma, an oil producing state.

Pruitt’s latest effort to block emission standards is part of an all-out assault on California’s environmental regulations.  California has sued the EPA 10 times since Trump took office over issues ranging from rolling back bans on dangerous air pollutants to offshore oil drilling.  The Trump administration has also imposed tariffs on imported solar equipment and end an Obama-era policy to cut CO2 pollution from electric power plants.

The rule that Pruitt seeks to destroy was based on a two-year deliberative process, while the Trump administration has provided zero factual evidence to support its effort to cancel the rule, according to Brown, who warns, “We’re losing the battle on climate change. We’ve got to step up our efforts.  This is about the survival of some of you and certainly, all of your children.”

It’s not just about California, the Governor who has led California’s efforts to build a green economy for the past four decades says. “It’s a battle not only for the soul of America, but the future of America,” he concludes.


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Comments

Yes it's true

"It's sad that the current GOP leadership and officials no longer seem to care about public health or even the future of our planet" Absolutely use it and abuse it till it blows up or melts down. That's the American way. Maybe when Bernie turns us all into Commies things will get better?

Commies?

Are you suggesting that Bernie Sanders may have colluded/worked with the Commies? Dang Mr. Bum! What about Money Laundering cash for the Commies? That too?

It was Nixon who created the EPA to help reduce pollution.

It's sad that the current GOP leadership and officials no longer seem to care about public health or even the future of our planet and future generations, as their actions are seriously undermining all of these.

Teddy Roosevelt, another long ago Republican, founded  the National Park Serviece and National Forest Service but the Trump administration also wants to sell off our public lands or allow oil drilling, fracking, etc on these national treasures. 

Protecting the earth, nature's treasures and the public health should not be partisan issues, but it's up to voters to start challenging those running for office on these important issues instead of ignoring them.

 

 

Its difficult to take

Its difficult to take anything you author in the political section seriously, considering your constant attacks on our sitting president and the GOP party. One can easily assume that anything you write with regard to GOP politics will be a negative piece. How can you call yourself an unbiased reporter? I encourage you to look at the definition of "Media Bias" Media Bias Defined Specifically, under "Types" and I quote "The most commonly discussed forms of bias occur when the (allegedly partisan) media support or attack a particular political party,[3] candidate,[4] or ideology." It is my opinion, that the overall bias within your politics section is undeniable, Miriam.

Apparently you don't care about facts.

Our reporting on the president is no different than every major media outlet in the country, such as ABC, CBS, NBC, the Washington Post, New York Times, CNN, Time Magazine etc.  This president is the most controvresial in our nation's history and we have never before had a president with such inflammatory actions that appear to be overtly racist, misogynist, dismantling civil rights and environmental protection laws that so many Americans fought so hard to get enacted.  Anyone who thinks news outlets should not report on that, and that merely reporting on the facts is somehow an "attack" is misnformed about the definition of "news."

Glad you like the sports reporting, at least!

Be better.

You are mistaken, I care very much about facts, but not when they're misreported and one-sided. Every media outlet you mentioned above is mostly liberal, so from my perspective they only count as one. What about Fox News?, They have the most watched, highest rated news programs on cable TV.  You are doing a huge disservice to yourself by not considering that fact when you choose to publish your editorials. You are casting a smaller net than a true unbiased news aggregator. How about the fact the the Attorney General of the United States visited our community 2 days ago? No mention of that. How about the story of the federal judge who gave Robert Mueller a public spanking and basically said "Its a witch hunt" https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-russia-manafort/u-s-judge-questions-special-counsels-powers-in-manafort-case-idUSKBN1I51WE You mention CBS above as a reliable source, how about reporting on their latest poll that shows 53% of Americans currently believe the Russia investigation is politically motivated? https://www.cbsnews.com/news/more-americans-now-say-russia-investigation-is-politically-motivated-cbs-news-poll/ Look, you hate Trump I get it, probably as much as I hated Obama and Hillary. What I don't understand is how you can continue your claim of being "non-partisan"and consider your reporting unbiased. Its not possible to be an unbiased reporter when the majority of your work contains such vitriol. If you truly want to be considered an unbiased reporter, then you need a little self-awareness. Own who you are, stop pretending to be something you're not.

Most watched doesn't mean unbiased.

You have zero objective criteria for deeming Fox trustworthy. It's simply not.

Every single source-check that is nonpartisan considers Fox News to be mostly a propaganda network, not news when it comes to politics (though they do provide good coverage on things like natural disasters around the world):

PunditFact, : http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/article/2014/sep/16/fact-checking-f... ranks Fox the worst on the truth-o-meter, with MSNBC, a liberal leaning network, second worst. PunditFact is published by the Pulitzer Prize winning Politifact, a nonpartisan political fact check site.

Fox News Channel has been accused of biased reporting and promoting the Republican Party and has been deemed the least accurate cable news source according to Politifact. (7/19/2016)

Sourcewatch https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Fox_News :  "The Fox News Channel (FNC) is a cable news channel owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation and Saudi Arabian Prince Alwaleed bin Talal[1]; it is considered by many as a quasi-arm of the Republican party or at least the right wing movement.[2]

Surveys have found that Fox News viewers have more misconceptions than those who get their news from other media outlets.[3]"

MediaBias https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/fox-news/  measures bias in news networks too and finds Fox to be right-leaning.

It's one thing to be conservative leaning, but quite another to distort facts, which is regularly done on Fox. 

As for Trump himself, he's been documented on every single fact check site as lying more than any other president in history, in either party.  why doesn't that concern you?  One can agree with a politician's views but disapprove of actions such as lying, corruption, and denigrating women, for example.  Many Democrats who voted for Clinton spoke out against his actions with Monica Lewinski or Bob Filner's sexual misconduct. That sense of accountability seems to be lacking in most Trump voters, who seem to excuse anything he does or says simply because he calls the media "fake" when in fact, he is the one regularly caught telling whoppers.  More than anything else I am disturbed by his blatant efforts to discredit highly credible media, which is something dictators like Putin do, not democratic nations' leaders.  The NY Times and Washington Post have won many, many Putlizer prizes and other top journalism prizes for their objective investigative reporting, going after leaders in both political parties over the years as well as many consumer protection cases and more.  While every journalism outlet occasionally makes errors or receives false info from a source, such things are rare in the legitimate media and common on the propaganda outlets, and legitimate media will publish prompt corrections if they do get something wrong.  When has Fox ever done that?

 

 

Laughing out loud....

I'm smiling at the fact that you skipped right past the other two subjects I mentioned. Just couldn't get beyond the FOX News reference, huh? I'm not going to bother going through and debunking each of your claims, but I'll address a few. First, FOX does not claim to be unbiased nor do I. However, neither FOX nor myself run a news aggregator that claims to be "non-partisan", or "Unbiased", you do. Second, Politifact/PunditFact yeah one in the same and both garbage, see here: Yep, they're Biased Third, "Every single source-check that is nonpartisan considers Fox News to be mostly a propaganda network, not news when it comes to politics" - Please direct me to your supporting data so I'm not inclined to believe you just made this up.... Fourth, your comparison to Bill Clinton's actions vs Donald Trump's is a wonderful example of why those of us on the Right laugh at your logic! You do realize that Bill Clinton's actions that got him into hot water took place while he was in office......literally? :) Same goes for Filner. What you folks are going after Trump for happened 12 years before he even ran for office, don't you get that??? We didn't elect him because we thought he was morally a great guy, we elected him because he was not a career politician and we thought he'd keep his campaign promises and guess what? He’s doing just that! I don’t care what Trump did in a hotel room 12 years ago and unfortunately for your team, most of the US doesn’t either. BTW, 3 American hostages were freed from a North Korean prison today! MAGA!

Tired of arguing with someone divorced from reality.

There is no point researching every one of your misguided statements and debunking them as you ignore facts anyway.

But as for Trump, the gravest concern is Russia pulling his strings, as they clearly are doing. We basically have a "Manchurian candidate" elected (referring to the movie).  That's very much present tense. All of his latest actions regarding North Korea, Iran, etc. benefit Russia along with much of the other things he did.  Pulling our troops out of South Korea leaves the door wide open for North Korea to march right in with its heavy ground forces and take over South Korea.  That's way more important than his cavorting with porn stars long ago, and on that  point I agree. And that wasn't what I was referring to as far as his treatment of women; I was referring to more recent statements he made on the campaign trail denigrating women with whom he disagrees such as trashing their appearances and saying debate moderate Megan Kelly of Fox News (your favorite network) had "blood coming out of her whatever." That's boorish, crude, sexist and demaening anyway you look at it. 

And I DID provide links to at least 4 different fact check sites, all of them considered nonpartisan.  One of them was also critical of MSNBC for its left-leaning and often opinionated coverage, just it it criticized FOX for being right-wing and ignoring facts. You seem to think anything that's actually based on facts and recognized by the journalism international or national community as valid and well-researched news reporting is fake or biased, just because the actual fake and biased propaganda sources say so.  But they cannot substantiate that.

 

You poor thing....

I can't imagine what it must be like in your world, peeking out from under the covers every morning wondering if the world is coming to an end each day.....sad. You really have drank the CNN Kool-Aid and clearly there is no hope for you in returning to reality. I do hope you can adjust, considering all things currently indicate you'll be stuck with Donald Trump for the next 6 years (WooHoo) and most likely Don Jr. after that. If you think I'm wrong, you can always go back crunch numbers with the pollsters who had Hillary winning the last one by a landslide lol. I'll leave you with this, in hopes that it might proved some comfort. Russia is not controlling our President, you can take that to the bank and expect to have that check cashed very soon....tick-tock. North Korea isn't going anywhere, except to the bargaining table because someone finally had the balls to call their bluff. Every previous administration has kicked that proverbial can down the road and all it took was someone Kym viewed as crazy enough to take him out, checkmate. As for the Iranians, what a load of crap that deal is! Its basically nothing but a protection racket like the Mob used to run in the 30's. "Here, we'll pay you money if you promise not to build bombs and kill innocent people" And as it turns out, they're building them anyway. I say let Israel and Saudi Arabia take care of that problem and be done with it. Last but not least by any means, Trump does say some stupid stuff now and then and I won't defend his words, but then again we all say stupid stuff, lord knows I've read plenty of stupid stuff right here within these pages. Have a great weekend, sleep tight.

A MOST WELCOME SHELTER FROM THE STORM

Many of us appreciate a non-Conservative outlet here in East County. I don’t think this outlet is an overtly Liberal outlet but I do feel it leans more left than right. That’s my individual opinion. This particular medium however does run stories about those that are not Conservative Politicians that have found themselves in questionable activities. This East County Outlet does do interviews during Political Season with Candidates from all Local Parties. Is that vitriolic? I have seen comments posted on this site, including yours, that are very disparaging of this Editor yet they stay up. You sir used the word vitriol describing Miriam Raftery but you don’t seem to have the fortitude to say that other than from behind the monicker of a pseudonym. How about showing the readers what you really got, from behind the veil, and then we will see your true passion for rightfullness shine through your otherwise troll-like comments. Or as you said earlier to Miriam, own who you are.

https://www.yelp.com/topic/san-diego-why-am-i-hearing-sd-is-so-conservative

You've been tried and found wanting.

I'll waste no more time on dialogue with you Gene, you can't even answer you own questions. I've learned everything I need to know about your character from our previous engagements and you're not worthy of my time. Good day, Sir.

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA SMOG

Much of which is directly caused by motor vehicles, yet there are other sources such as: Lawn mowers, leaf blowers, and BBQ's. It all adds up to create a toxic environment in which we live. If we ignore pollution, then we could end up like India, or China someday. I find it sad and quite troubling that Trump continues his undermining of everything Obama did for this country. Seriously, what's wrong with the guy? I though we lived in a democracy where the people had a say in what our leaders are supposed to do for the good of everyone. Far too many times we see this, where decisions are made without a say from the citizens. I call that a dictatorship.