Message of the Week: May 18, 2020
-
People across the country deserve to live in clean, safer, and healthy communities, yet in the face of a deadly virus that preys on people with respiratory disease, Donald Trump and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator
Andrew Wheeler are taking aggressive steps to worsen air pollution.
-
Wheeler’s EPA announced it was issuing an
unprecedented and sweeping suspension of its enforcement of environmental safeguards – just one of many reckless actions Wheeler has taken since the onset of the global
public health crisis. This decision is a direct giveaway to dirty corporate polluters and comes on the heels of oil and gas industry lobbyists
asking EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler to give them a free pass to pollute.
-
On Wednesday, Wheeler will testify before the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works in an attempt to explain away his reckless actions during the COVID-19 public health pandemic.
-
The public deserves answers on why Wheeler – a former coal lobbyist – has done all in his power to abdicate his agency’s responsibility to protect our health and environment and instead take steps that make it harder to breathe.
-
Why is it okay to stop enforcing our environmental laws at a time when
recent research has shown that air pollution makes COVID-19 more deadly?
-
How can Administrator Wheeler justify his
proposal to undermine the lifesaving Mercury and Air Toxic Standards (MATS) at a time when the industry subject to these protections has already invested over
$18 billion in compliance?
-
Why, during a public health and economic crisis, is Administrator Wheeler rolling back the clean car standards that have been proven to fight climate change, protect our health, and save drivers money at the pump?
-
Why is Administrator Wheeler proposing to implement a rule that would eliminate key public health data — including data that could be used to help fight COVID-19 – despite
warnings by the EPA’s independent Science Advisory Board?
-
How can Wheeler justify his decision to
decline to strengthen protections against lung-damaging industrial soot pollution even when it’s been
proven that air pollution makes COVID-19 more deadly?
-
These abdications of EPA’s responsibility to protect our health and environment must be reversed. The public deserves real leaders who put the EPA’s mission of protecting our health and environment first - not Wheeler’s toxic
environmental agenda that exploits a global pandemic to continue his relentless assault on public health and environmental safeguards.
Reorient Target Messaging
-
[Senator] needs to hold EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler accountable and have a plan to address all threats to public health, including the coronavirus and the climate crisis.
Renew Target Messaging
-
As EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler continues to attack public health safeguards, we need [Senator] to take action and have a plan to help protect our health and environment, enhance job creation and the economy, and mitigate
the worst impacts of climate change.
Energize Target Messaging
-
Donald Trump and EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler are taking aggressive steps to worsen our air quality amid this global public health crisis. We commend [Representative] for moving swiftly to address this crisis and for
understanding that science matters in developing public policies that protect our health and environment.
-------------
Additional Resources
For more national and state-specific facts about climate change, clean energy, extreme weather, and carbon pollution, please visit the regularly updated Climate Change Index at
https://climateindex.org/