See no emission? State attorneys say Trump plan to stop tracking climate pollution is illegal

A coalition of 15 states including Washington and Oregon says a Trump administration proposal to turn a blind eye to greenhouse gas pollution is illegal.

Under a proposal from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, major polluters would no longer have to tally or disclose the damage they do to the global climate with their emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping pollutants.

Trump officials say the longstanding federal requirement to keep track of pollution overheating the planet is “burdensome,” costing the oil and gas industry $256 million a year and other industries $47 million annually.

“The Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program is nothing more than bureaucratic red tape that does nothing to improve air quality,” Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Zeldin said in a Sept. 12 press release. “Instead, it costs American businesses and manufacturing billions of dollars, driving up the cost of living, jeopardizing our nation’s prosperity, and hurting American communities.”

“They don't think it's necessary to regulate or track greenhouse gases at all,” Washington state Assistant Attorney General Chris Reitz said. “This is another major pillar of federal greenhouse gas policy that they're tearing down.”

The proposal is part of a larger push by the White House to remove regulations on fossil fuels and “unleash American energy.”

Decades of scientific evidence have established that greenhouse gas emissions endanger human health and ecosystems worldwide, now and in the years ahead, by raising the earth’s temperature, increasing heat waves, and worsening both droughts and storms.

Despite the overwhelming scientific consensus, the Trump administration argues that climate change does not endanger human health, which would mean the government lacks authority to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act.

The 15-state coalition of attorneys general say that failing to keep tabs on the most urgent environmental problem of our time will not make it go away.

“The proposal is a blatant attempt to hide the actions of the most egregious corporate climate polluters in the United States from public scrutiny,” the coalition said in a letter submitted to the Environmental Protection Agency on Monday, just before the agency’s deadline for public comment on its proposed rule.

The 15-state coalition also includes the chief legal officers of Chicago, New York, and Washington, D.C.

At least 11 states, including Washington and Oregon, require polluters to keep tabs on their in-state emissions that heat the planet. Washington state uses the data as the backbone for its system of carbon auctions that force major polluters to pay for the privilege of emitting greenhouse gases.

If the EPA proposal is enacted, those state-level programs would continue, but without the federal government’s data-gathering tools, which many states rely on. Major polluters in those states would still have to calculate and report their emissions, just not to the federal government.

“EPA should be aware that the cost to our industry of eliminating the reporting program will be greater than that of maintaining the program because of the dramatically increased costs of complying with a patchwork of state requirements,” Ben Kallen with SEMI, a semiconductor industry association, commented to the agency.

Washington state officials say that developing a pollution-reporting platform similar to EPA’s would cost the state $3 million over the next three years.

The EPA has been requiring greenhouse gas reporting in some form since 1970, with the current Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program launched in 2010 under President Obama.