Following an 18-month tenure filled with a cascade of scandals, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt resigned Thursday. President Donald Trump acknowledged Pruitt's resignation in a tweet and announced that EPA Deputy Administrator Andrew Wheeler will run the agency in the interim, starting Monday. Pruitt was known most for his denial of climate change... Wheeler replaces Pruitt as EPA chief, climate denial, fossil fuel support continue apace
Following an 18-month tenure filled with a cascade of scandals, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt resigned Thursday. President Donald Trump acknowledged Pruitt's resignation in a tweet and announced that EPA Deputy Administrator Andrew Wheeler will run the agency in the interim, starting Monday. Pruitt was known most for his denial of climate change...
The announced retirement Wednesday of Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy could have dramatic and detrimental effects on environmental quality. Since the retirement of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor in 2006, Kennedy has been a pivotal vote on the court, siding with the majority on at least two crucial rulings to expand the reach of the EPA. The...
Editor's note: Green Car Reports covers a lot of electric cars—and there are a lot more to cover these days, thanks to California's complex requirements that major automakers produce zero emissions vehicles for sale. For fans of clean cars—as well as opponents—it's difficult to understand how many plug-in cars the state requires...
In light of the EPA Administrator Scott Priutt reversing the Agency's decision to maintain tighter emissions standards from 2022 to 2025, it seemed time to ask for our audience's opinion. Since 2009, the EPA emissions standards have had a direct effect on fuel economy standards and have been coordinated with the National Highway Traffic Safety...
Over the many months EPA administrator Scott Pruitt signaled his intention to revisit the Obama administration's emission limits for 2022 through 2025 vehicles, California warned that it would not go along with any reductions. The state has been allowed to set its own emission standards for decades, it noted, and it has every intention of sticking...
While the name of EPA administrator Scott Pruitt is often preceded by "embattled" these days, his agency is now on record as rejecting its own recommendation of just 16 months ago. It concluded in July 2016 that the auto industry had handily met lower carbon-emission limits from 2012 through 2017—at lower cost and with more conventional...
In response to automaker lobbying, the EPA plans to start the process of rolling back emission standards passed under the Obama Administration. Automakers claimed the associated fuel-economy rules were unrealistic given that consumers are flocking to crossover utilities and pickup trucks as gas prices remain low. A new report by the American...
EPA administrator Scott Pruitt said yesterday the agency plans to modify rules limiting carbon-dioxide emissions for light-duty vehicles in model years 2022 through 2025. The agency, he said, had reached a determination that the limits put in place in 2012 under the Obama administration were “not appropriate and should be revised." The...
EPA administrator Scott Pruitt would be controversial even if he hadn't flown to Morocco in December (first-class, on the taxpayer dime) to lobby the country on the benefits of liquified natural gas while living in a condo owned by a lobbyist for the country's largest LNG exporter. He is likely the first EPA head to axe scientists from the...
The first major emission controls on motor vehicles were introduced in 1975 with the advent of the catalytic converter. Today's cars emit less than 1 percent of the three "criteria" pollutants that came out of their tailpipes half a century ago. They emit relatively so little carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, and hydrocarbons that the collective...
It might be the world’s largest single-company junkyard and pick-a-part business, if not for the prominent "No Trespassing" and "Drone-Free Zone" signs. Instead, it’s a massive storage facility in Colorado for thousands of disgraced VW and Audi TDI diesel vehicles awaiting whatever fate holds for them. At least the locale, in the...
Last November, the Environmental Protection Agency said it would rescind a rule that banned companies from fitting outdated, older, and dirtier diesel engines into brand-new "glider" chassis-cab trucks. Among the many regulations to limit emissions and other forms of pollution that EPA administrator Scott Pruitt has axed, this one was particularly...
Fiat Chrysler will abandon the use of diesel engines in all its passenger vehicles by 2022, according to a report Sunday. The company has seen demand for diesel versions of its passenger cars in Europe collapse and faces high costs to get diesel engines to comply with emission limits in real-world use, it said. FCA is expected to announce the move...