A tiff between two key government agencies over how to justify one of President Trump’s biggest reversals of his predecessor’s climate policies may provide progressive litigators with leverage to bring the rollback to a skidding halt.
At the beginning of August, the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), a division of the Transportation Department, jointly estimated that keeping the gas mileage rules set by President Obama for cars could cost lives. The restrictions on tailpipe emissions for future cars was one of the single biggest way the Obama administration planned to reduce climate-warming emissions.
But behind the scenes, the two agencies squabbled when writing a rationale for the reversal, Chris Mooney and I reported Wednesday. The key disagreement centered on the transportation agency’s claim that the Obama-era car rules would lead to more deaths. The agency contended upping car mileage per gallon would cost automakers money and make new cars several thousand dollars more expensive — leading people to drive older cars that perform less well in accidents.
