President Joe Biden’s outgoing administration has granted California special Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) waivers to impose higher emissions standards for lawnmowers, leaf blowers, refrigerated trucks, and off-road vehicles. [emphasis, links added]
Politico reported on Friday:
The moves are some of President Joe Biden’s last attempts to safeguard California’s progressive climate policies from President-elect Donald Trump a little over two weeks before he takes office with a promise to dismantle the state’s regulations.
The Environmental Protection Agency’s approval of the waivers — which grant California the authority to set stricter-than-federal emissions regulations under the Clean Air Act — gives the state’s nation-leading rules an extra layer of protection from Trump and his allies. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) pledged Friday that the Republican-led House would prioritize ending electric vehicle policies and other Democratic climate efforts.
California officials have been calling for Biden’s EPA to grant waivers for eight of its rules for over a year. Friday’s decisions come on the heels of two other waivers EPA issued in December covering the state’s tailpipe pollution rules for cars and trucks.
California’s tougher regulations on emissions, like its regulations on eggs and pork, have the potential to impact the American market as a whole, given the size of California’s population (nearly 40 million people) and its market.
The American Trucking Associations criticized a waiver issued by Biden’s EPA last month that will allow California to impose tighter emissions standards on trucks, adding:
“This ill-advised waiver will be short-lived. We look forward to the incoming administration and soon-to-be EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin reversing these misguided policies and restoring common sense to the nation’s environmental policy.”
There are also concerns that tighter regulations on trucks could lead to truckers avoiding California entirely, leaving fewer trucks to pick up cargo at California’s Long Beach and Los Angeles ports, the busiest in the nation, which could in turn lead to new cargo crises, like the crisis in 2021.
Read more at Breitbart
