Message of the Week

August 27, 2018

This weekend marked the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Harvey, the devastating and deadly supercharged storm that battered Texas during one of the most severe hurricane seasons on record. Since then, instead of taking action to address climate change, the Trump administration and Acting Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Andrew Wheeler are making it worse, rolling back key climate and health protections like the Clean Power Plan and clean car standards that would help combat the climate change supercharging extreme weather events like Harvey.

• In just the last few weeks, the Trump administration announced the roll back of clean car standards that would reduce carbon pollution from transportation, now the largest source of carbon pollution in the U.S.
  • This roll back would allow the carbon pollution equivalent to burning 2.4 trillion pounds of coal to be dumped into our air by 2040.
• Then, Wheeler and Trump revealed their new “Dirty Power Scam,” their scheme to roll back the lifesaving Clean Power Plan, which set the first ever federal limits on carbon pollution from power plants and encouraged the development of cleaner, safer energy.
  • According to the Trump administration’s own analysis, the Clean Power Plan would have prevented up to 4,500 premature deaths per year when fully implemented, while their Dirty Power Scam will result in nearly 1,440 more premature deaths associated with power plant pollution.
• Last year’s Atlantic hurricane season was the most deadly and destructive on record. Hurricane Harvey caused nearly 90 deaths and an estimated $125 billion in damage in Texas alone.
• This year, NOAA scientists say the increase in violent extreme weather in the Pacific - like Hurricane Lane that battered the Hawaiian islands last week - are a direct result of climate change.
• But it's not just hurricanes. Record wildfires are claiming lives and property in the west, especially in California, while record rainfall is drenching the midwest, with severe flooding threatening lives and communities in Wisconsin. Climate change is impacting communities from coast to coast, but the Trump administration continues to deny it.
• Instead of protecting Americans from climate change, Trump and Wheeler are making it worse. Rolling back critical lifesaving protections that reduce carbon pollution puts us at risk from more severe hurricanes, frequent flooding, and deadly extreme heat.
• Americans should ask themselves: whose side are Trump and Wheeler on? Are they with [STATE] families who want clean air and water, and businesses who want the transition to cleaner, cheaper energy? Or are they on the side of the polluters - the only ones to gain from these dangerous rollbacks?

Lia