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“This should be the last summer we have to stress about our lives being on the line over peaker plants."
The next big battlegrounds.
When U.S. EPA boss Scott Pruitt inks his proposal to ax the Clean Power Plan today, the epic brawl over the Obama-era climate rule will be nowhere near over.
When U.S. EPA boss Scott Pruitt inks his proposal to ax the Clean Power Plan today, the epic brawl over the Obama-era climate rule will be nowhere near over.
Pruitt's signature kicks off a lengthy regulatory process and sets up another court fight for a rule that's already been at the center of some precedent-setting legal decisions. The move also becomes political fodder for friends and foes of the Trump administration's climate policies, and could potentially surface on the campaign trail in contests for Congress and the White House.
It'll all take a while to play out.
"I think this is the first step; I think the resolution of this whole package of issues is probably not going to come before the end of this presidential term," said Richard Revesz, director of the Institute for Policy Integrity at the New York University School of Law. The outcome will probably be determined by "whoever gets elected in the 2020 election," he added.
Here's a breakdown of the next battles:
The courts
Pruitt hasn't even signed his draft repeal yet, but top lawyers in blue states have already promised legal action.
"If and when the Trump Administration finalizes this repeal, I will sue," New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman (D) said in a statement yesterday after Pruitt announced his plans to sign the proposal.
Others followed suit. California Attorney General Xavier Becerra (D) said, "I will do everything in my power to defend the Clean Power Plan." Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey (D) piled on, saying, "[W]e will be suing to protect the Clean Power Plan from the climate change deniers in this administration who are trying to move us backwards."
Lawsuits over the final repeal plan and a possible replacement rule — which would likely be much narrower than the Obama regulation — are a given. Those could take months or even years to play out, though, since legal challenges likely won't be filed until after EPA's moves are finalized. Challengers of the Clean Power Plan — including Pruitt — attempted to thwart the Obama-era rule before it was final, but those efforts were rebuffed in court.
"We are better lawyers than Scott Pruitt; we know we can't challenge a proposed rule in court," said Sierra Club attorney Joanne Spalding, who's one of many lawyers defending the Clean Power Plan in an ongoing lawsuit.
Less certain than future litigation is what happens to the legal battle over the Obama rule. Judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit have put that rule on ice while the Trump administration decides how to proceed. The Supreme Court intervened last year and blocked the rule after the D.C. Circuit declined to do so.
Some lawyers expect the D.C. Circuit to indefinitely delay the lawsuit, but supporters of the climate rule are holding out hope that the court will issue an opinion.
"We still think that the best thing to have happen would be for the court to decide that case," Spalding said.
A move by the D.C. Circuit upholding the legality of the Clean Power Plan could complicate Pruitt's arguments that the repeal is needed because EPA overstepped its authority under the Clean Air Act.
Pat Parenteau, a professor at Vermont Law School, said he expects that the case "just sits there." It's possible that Trump administration lawyers could ask to dismiss it as moot, given plans to roll back the rule in question, he said. "It seems to me like they could."
Backers of the Clean Power Plan could also ask the Supreme Court to remove the stay, potentially arguing that EPA has an obligation to regulate power plants' emissions and that the Trump administration is slowing down that process.
"Going to the Supreme Court is a possibility," Spalding said. "We would definitely have to see what EPA says in this proposal."
The Supreme Court could also ultimately be asked to weigh in on the Trump administration's repeal and possibly forthcoming replacement rule.
The Federal Register
The federal regulatory process is a lengthy one, with a host of bureaucratic steps agencies are required to take before finalizing rules.
Once EPA's repeal plans are published in the Federal Register, the agency will start receiving a deluge of comments expressing a wide range of views. The Obama EPA received more than 4.3 million comments on its draft Clean Power Plan. The agency is required to respond to those comments — although it can do so broadly — when it finalizes its plans.
"I'm sure there are going to be a lot of comments," said Revesz of NYU Law School.
EPA is also expected to hold a public hearing, where supporters and opponents of the rule will likely come out in droves.
Eventually, the agency will issue its final repeal plan. "I'd be shocked if it was in 2017. My guess is it'll be 2018," Revesz said.
The agency will go through that same process with its planned replacement, if it decides to issue one. A leaked copy of the draft rule suggests that EPA is leaving the door open to not replacing the rule. But if an alternative is pursued, it would be much narrower. The agency is expected to take comments on a possible replacement soon and could issue another draft regulation in the coming months.
Jeff Holmstead, a former EPA air chief who's now an industry attorney at Bracewell LLP, expects the administration to finish both the repeal and a replacement rule in Trump's first term. He speculated both of those could be finalized within the next 18 months. He also expects that the litigation over the Clean Power Plan repeal and replacement rules "would probably be finished before the end of Trump's first term."
Industry vs. industry
Meanwhile, the Trump administration is hearing competing views from industries about how to replace the rule — if at all.
That industry infighting could complicate the push to get a new policy out the door.
Some of Trump's allies in the energy world — including coal magnate Bob Murray, CEO of Murray Energy Corp. — are pushing the administration to obliterate the rule with no replacement.
Other industry groups — including some utilities, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers — have pushed the administration for a dramatically scaled-back version of the Obama-era rule. A replacement is needed to give their industries certainty, they argue.
I "certainly expect that they will do a replacement rule even though they've left open the possibility that they might not," Holmstead said.
Capitol Hill
Congressional Democrats have made it clear they're no fans of Pruitt's climate rollbacks, but their hands are largely tied by their minority status.
"There's very little if anything they can do at this point in time," said Jim Manley, former spokesman for then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.).
He added, "If you look back at the last nine years, I think Democrats have become very aggressive about working with individual states to push back on the regulatory front, and I expect that to be the case here as well with plenty of pro-environment Democrats trying to elevate the issue to the extent possible."
Democrats may be able to play defense against broader attempts to change clean air laws, said David Doniger, a climate attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council.
"The single most important thing they can do is prevent changes in the Clean Air Act," he said. "Republicans can't pass legislation to deny climate science or to revoke the obligations to deal with climate. ... The Clean Air Act will outlast this administration."
Senate Republicans, meanwhile, have applauded the rollback of the Clean Power Plan. Pruitt opted to appear alongside Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) in Kentucky yesterday to announce that the formal repeal was coming.
"For years, the Obama administration waged a war on coal and issued heavy-handed regulations to pick winners and losers among energy industries," Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) said in a statement. "It's refreshing to see how committed the Trump administration is to pursuing a true all-of-the-above energy policy, and Administrator Pruitt's announcement is another sign that America's energy strategy is headed in the right direction."
Public opinion
Supporters of the Clean Power Plan are also hoping to make some gains with messaging campaigns.
"There's a battle in the court of public opinion and also in the legal courts," Doniger said.
He and others are pointing to the huge health benefits that EPA estimated the Clean Power Plan would bring. The Trump administration appears poised to argue that many of those benefits were wrongly counted.
Some early talking points by environmentalists accuse the Trump administration of allowing premature deaths by rescinding the rule.
"With this news, Donald Trump and Scott Pruitt will go down in infamy for launching one of the most egregious attacks ever on public health, our climate, and the safety of every community in the United States," Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune said in a statement yesterday. "The damage caused by Trump's willful ignorance will now have myriads of human faces, because he's proposing to throw out a plan that would prevent thousands of premature deaths and tens of thousands of childhood asthma attacks every year."
Conservatives, meanwhile, are arguing that the rule is helping workers and the economy.
West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey (R) — who's running for Senate in the Mountain State — led states in a lawsuit against the regulation.
"I was humbled to have led the state-based coalition that defeated the Power Plan in court through an unprecedented stay at the Supreme Court and am excited that the Trump Administration is taking the final step to kill this terrible, job-killing regulation," he said in a statement yesterday. "I believe these actions will help lead to a rebound for coal and will make lives better for coal miners and their families."
Twitter: @rbravender Email: rbravender@eenews.net
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EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt announces withdrawal of Clean Power Plan.
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt announced Monday his agency's plans to withdraw the Clean Power Plan, the sweeping Obama-era rule regulating greenhouse gas emissions.
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt announced Monday his agency's plans to withdraw the Clean Power Plan, the sweeping Obama-era rule regulating greenhouse gas emissions.
While speaking in Kentucky at an event with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Pruitt said he will sign the proposed rule repealing Obama's plan Tuesday.
"When you think about what that rule meant, it was about picking winners and losers. Regulatory power should not be used by any regulatory body to pick winners and losers," he said at the event. "The past administration was using every bit of power and authority to use the EPA to pick winners and losers and how we generate electricity in this country. That's wrong."
CNN obtained a copy of the leaked proposal to repeal the milestone Clean Power Plan, the outcome of President Donald Trump's executive orders calling for the review of the plan and questions the legality of the original rule.
"Under the interpretation proposed in this notice, the CPP exceeds the EPA's statutory authority and would be repealed," the proposal reads. "The EPA welcomes comment on the legal interpretation addressed in this proposed rulemaking."
The proposal also says the EPA has yet to determine whether it will create an additional rule on the regulation of greenhouse gases.
EPA to propose repealing Obama-era rule on greenhouse gas emissions
Bloomberg News first reported on the repeal proposal.
The Clean Power Plan requires states to meet specific carbon emission reduction standards based on their individual energy consumption. The plan also includes an incentive program for states to get a head start on meeting standards on early deployment of renewable energy and low-income energy efficiency.
Under President Barack Obama, the EPA estimated the Clean Power Plan could prevent 2,700 to 6,600 premature deaths and 140,000 to 150,000 asthma attacks in children.
When asked earlier this year on Fox News about the health consequences of doing away with the Clean Power Plan, Pruitt ducked the question and focused on how the plan would cost jobs. He argued the plan was bureaucratic overreach.
"As much as we want to see progress made with clean air and clean water, with an understanding that we can also grow jobs, we have to do so within the framework of what Congress has passed," Pruitt said.
Former EPA employees have reacted harshly to the planned repeal of the rule. Obama's EPA administrator, Gina McCarthy, called the proposal "just plain backwards."
"A proposal to repeal the Clean Power Plan without any time line or even a commitment to propose a rule to reduce carbon pollution, isn't a step forward, it's a wholesale retreat from EPA's legal, scientific and moral obligation to address the threats of climate change," McCarthy said in a statement Friday.
Environmental advocacy groups quickly blasted Pruitt's decision, with many vowing to fight the measure in court.
"Now the public has an opportunity to weigh in, as EPA is required to accept public comment on the proposed repeal and a discussion paper on a replacement," Rhea Suh, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, said in a statement Monday. "In addition, NRDC expects to take EPA to court when the Clean Power Plan repeal is made final."
When reports of the EPA's planned move began to be reported over the weekend, Environmental Defense Fund President Fred Krupp said repealing the plan without replacing it with any protections from "climate-destabilizing pollution" would fail to protect Americans from harmful pollution designated under the Clean Air Act.
And Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club, said Trump and Pruitt are launching "one of the most egregious attacks" on public health and climate safety.
"No matter who is in the White House, the EPA is legally required to limit dangerous carbon pollution, and the Clean Power Plan is an achievable, affordable way to do that," Brune said in a Monday news release. "It is a key element in continuing the progress moving toward clean energy and retiring coal."
Former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg, whose philanthropy said it would donate $15 million toward supporting operations of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change after the Trump administration announced intentions to withdraw from the Paris climate accord, tweeted his criticism of the repeal proposal Monday.
"The EPA can repeal the Clean Power Plan but not the laws of economics," Bloomberg tweeted. "This won't revive coal or stop the US from reaching our Paris goal."
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Maine will suffer from EPA chief's pro-coal stand.
A warming climate and polluted air are all we have to gain from keeping dirty power plants running.
A warming climate and polluted air are all we have to gain from keeping dirty power plants running.
BY THE EDITORIAL BOARD
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The Clean Power Plan would level the economic playing field for Maine, which has to compete with parts of the country where electricity produced at dirty power plants, like the Homer City Generating Station in Homer City, Pa., above, is inexpensive. Associated Press/Keith Srakocic
Heat-trapping greenhouse gases and toxic particles spew from the smokestacks of coal-fired power plants all through the Rust Belt.
We don’t have those kinds of plants here in Maine, but we have plenty of evidence that they exist.
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EPA chief to lift limits on emissions, says ‘war on coal is over’
Our winters are wetter and shorter than they used to be, thanks to climate change. Lobstermen report that their quarry is moving north and east to find colder water.
And Maine children have some of the highest rates of asthma in the nation, partly as a result of our position downwind from the power plants in the Midwest and Great Lakes states, putting young lungs at the end of the nation’s tailpipe.
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Read more Portland Press Herald editorials
So Environmental Protection Agency director Scott Pruitt’s boast Monday that “The war on coal is over!” probably sounded like great news to a few hundred people in Kentucky and West Virginia who might get work as a result of his upending the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan rules, but it should be clear why he didn’t make that announcement here.
Maine will be a big loser both environmentally and economically if Pruitt is successful, and Maine’s leaders should fight to make sure that he doesn’t succeed.
One-third of the greenhouse gases emitted in this country come from fossil fuel-burning power plants, mostly coal and natural gas. The Clean Power Plan created a financial incentive to produce less pollution over time. Since coal plants are the dirtiest, logic would dictate that they would be the first to go.
That might be bad news in the short term for people who own mining companies or utility stock, but it would speed the transition to other sources of power that do not have the same negative effects. The number of jobs in the solar power industry has already outstripped the number of jobs in coal mining, and it’s reasonable to assume that the trend will continue, as solar collector and battery technology get less expensive and more effective.
The Clean Power Plan would also level the economic playing field for Maine, which has to compete with parts of the country where electricity produced at dirty power plants is cheap. Not only do we have to pay more for our power than consumers in the coal belt, but we have to live with the consequences of the pollution that they produce.
And more importantly, there is no safe amount of pollution. Research by the American Lung Association has confirmed that every reduction of toxic chemicals in the air we breathe correlates to a reduction in illness and death. Children are especially sensitive to diseases caused by exposure to the airborne particles that are blown here on prevailing winds.
Pruitt claims that he is protecting the American people from government, but this is a time when we need the government to protect us from those who would value cheap electricity and quarterly profits above the public well-being.
By announcing an end to “the war on coal,” Pruitt and the administration are ramping up the war on clean air and a healthy environment. At this end of the tailpipe, that’s nothing to celebrate.
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Scott Pruitt says EPA will repeal Clean Power Plan Tuesday.
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator told coal miners in Kentucky Monday he will move to repeal a rule limiting greenhouse gas emissions from existing power plants.
By Juliet Eilperin and Brady Dennis October 9 at 4:07 PM Follow @eilperin Follow @brady_dennis
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt at the White House in June. (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt told coal miners in Kentucky on Monday that he will move to repeal a rule limiting greenhouse-gas emissions from existing power plants, assuring them, “The war against coal is over.”
Speaking at an event in Hazard, Ky., with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Pruitt said his agency will publish the new proposed rule Tuesday.
“Tomorrow, in Washington, D.C., I’ll be a signing a proposed rule to withdraw the so-called Clean Power Plan of the past administration, and thus begin the effort to withdraw that rule,” Pruitt said.
[Trump administration will propose repealing Obama’s key effort to combat climate change]
A 43-page draft of the proposal, which was obtained by The Washington Post and other news outlets last week, argues that the agency overstepped its legal authority in seeking to force utilities to reduce carbon emissions outside their actual facilities to meet federal emissions targets. It does not offer a replacement plan for regulating emissions of carbon dioxide, which the Supreme Court has ruled that the EPA is obligated to do. Rather, the agency said it plans to seek public input on how best to cut emissions from natural-gas and coal-fired power plants.
EPA spokeswoman Liz Bowman said in an interview Monday that Pruitt chose to speak about his plans in Kentucky because coal workers have a direct economic stake in policies aimed at curbing emissions from coal burning. “He’s speaking directly to people in coal country about how the rule negatively affected the whole industry,” Bowman said.
Reaction to the announcement was sharply divided, with environmental and public health advocates decrying it, and industry groups welcoming the move.
“With this news, Donald Trump and Scott Pruitt will go down in infamy for launching one of the most egregious attacks ever on public health, our climate, and the safety of every community in the United States,” Michael Brune, the executive director of the Sierra Club, said in a statement. “He’s proposing to throw out a plan that would prevent thousands of premature deaths and tens of thousands of childhood asthma attacks every year.”
National Rural Electric Cooperative Association chief executive Jim Matheson, one of the utility groups that challenged the Obama-era rule, said rescinding the regulation would provide his members with the flexibility to use their existing plants to provide “reliable, affordable power” to local customers. Sixty-two percent of coop-owned generation is coal-fired, according to the association, while natural gas accounts for 26 percent, nuclear power 10 percent and renewables 2 percent.
“That’s what we’re really looking for, is flexibility so they can meet their individual consumers’ needs,” Matheson said Monday.
Some critics of the rule said Monday that they were open to a more limited regulation aimed at addressing carbon emissions from power plants.
Ross Eisenberg, vice president of energy and resources policy at the National Association of Manufacturers, said in a statement that his group “agrees with the EPA’s conclusion that this regulation was broader than what the law allows, which is why we joined 28 states in challenging it in federal court.”
“At the same time, we recognize the need for a policy to address greenhouse gas emissions,” Eisenberg added, saying “The NAM supports a greenhouse gas policy going forward that is narrowly tailored and consistent with the Clean Air Act.”
The Clean Power Plan, which aimed to decrease the nation’s carbon pollution by about one-third by 2030, compared with 2005 levels, has long been subject to intense legal fights — and that much is unlikely to change.
During his time as Oklahoma attorney general, Pruitt joined other opponents in suing the Obama administration, arguing that it did not have legal authority to force states to form detailed plans to reduce CO2 emissions from such sources as coal-fired power plants. Pruitt sided with industry officials who insisted that the EPA’s regulations would unfairly force power-plant owners to shut down or essentially subsidize competing clean-energy industries.
[One of the oldest climate change experiments has led to a troubling conclusion]
Environmental groups and other supporters argued on the side of the Obama White House, saying the administration had standing under the Clean Air Act to put in place the effort, which they called a much-needed measure to help nudge the nation toward cleaner sources of energy and improve public health.
Early last year, the Supreme Court blocked the regulation’s implementation after 28 states and a host of other opponents challenged its legality. Its 5-to-4 decision did not address the merits of the lawsuit, came just days before the death of Justice Antonin Scalia. Meanwhile, a 10-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in September 2016 heard oral arguments on the case, but did not issue a ruling before the Trump administration took office and requested time to reconsider the rule.
[EPA inspector general expands investigation of Pruitt’s use of military, private flights]
Monday’s announcement that the EPA would seek to rescind the Clean Power Plan, with no promise of replacing it, brought promises of even more legal fights ahead. Attorneys general of multiple states — California, New York and Massachusetts among them — vowed to challenge the Trump administration’s decision. A 2009 EPA determination is still in place finding that carbon dioxide constitutes a pollutant under the Clean Air Act, so the agency will have to justify how it is complying with that finding as it rolls back the existing regulation.
“Along with our partners, Massachusetts fought for years to put this rule in place, and we will be suing to protect the Clean Power Plan from the climate change deniers in this administration who are trying to move us backwards,” Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey said in a statement Monday.
The EPA’s latest proposal to repeal the Clean Power Plan comes months after President Trump issued a directive instructing the Environmental Protection Agency to begin rewriting the controversial 2015 regulation, as part of a broader effort to obliterate his predecessor’s efforts to make combating climate change a top government priority.
A central piece of Obama’s environmental legacy, the Clean Power Plan aims to slash the greenhouse-gas emissions that scientists agree are fueling the planet’s rapid warming. It also was an integral part of the commitment U.S. officials made as part of a historic international climate accord signed in late 2015 in Paris, from which Trump has said he intends to withdraw.
In a statement Monday, former EPA administrator Gina McCarthy, who shepherded the rule during Obama’s second term, said that a proposal to repeal it “without any timeline or even a commitment to propose a rule to reduce carbon pollution, isn’t a step forward, it’s a wholesale retreat from EPA’s legal, scientific and moral obligation to address the threats of climate change.”
“The Supreme Court has concluded multiple times that EPA is obligated by law to move forward with action to regulate greenhouse gases, but this administration has no intention of following the law,” McCarthy said.
Michael Greenstone, a professor of economics at the University of Chicago who worked on climate policy for Obama, said in an interview Friday that the EPA had deliberately downplayed the benefits of curbing carbon to justify revoking the power-plant regulation.
“It does not feel like an effort to refresh the cost-benefit analysis to make sure it’s on the frontiers of science,” Greenstone said about the leaked proposal. “It seems like an effort to find the levers that will make the benefits go down.”
Chris Mooney contributed to this report.
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Volkswagen cheated. Make them pay.
The U.S. has been swift enough to secure billions of dollars in fines from the company, as criminal and civil penalties for breaking environmental law. But our federal Environment Ministry has done nothing.
Imagine this: an American and a Canadian are in a room with billions of dollars free for the taking. The American can’t believe her luck, helps herself to some money, and shares it fairly with the American public. But the Canadian, wanting to make sure the money is actually just sitting there, does nothing — leaving the Canadian public penniless.
That, in a nutshell, is the difference between America’s and Canada’s government when it comes to taking action against Volkswagen for its emissions cheating. The U.S. has been swift enough to secure billions of dollars in fines from the company, as criminal and civil penalties for breaking environmental law. But our federal Environment Ministry has done nothing.
It has been more than two years since news broke of Volkswagen cheating and then lying about the pollution caused by its diesel cars. Volkswagen equipped these vehicles with a secret software “defeat device” that switches between “clean” mode during pollution testing, and “dirty” mode when driving in the real world. This illegal hack caused Volkswagen’s cars to spew as much as 35 times the lawful amount of toxic substances, such as nitrogen oxides — known to increase asthma attacks, hospital admissions, and deaths, particularly among young children — into the air.
Once they discovered the defeat device, American law enforcement pounced. They laid criminal and civil charges so extensively that they could have squashed the company. Rather than risk death, Volkswagen cried uncle, pleaded guilty, and voluntarily paid $14.7 billion US in legal settlements — several billion of which went toward cleaning up the environment and building green infrastructure.
In other words, faced with a massive, credible legal risk, Volkswagen confessed and paid up — at least in the U.S.
You might think that a bonanza of billions of dollars, from a company that’s willing to pay, would interest Environment Canada in enforcing the law in Canada. But you would be wrong: Environment Canada has never laid charges against Volkswagen. That continues to be true even though the company’s guilty plea in the U.S. contains a clause that forbids Volkswagen contradicting and walking back from its confessions, anytime or anywhere — including in a courtroom in Canada.
In other words, Volkswagen’s admission of guilt in the U.S. is locked in; recanting it is not an option. That makes subsequent prosecutions in Canada very easy.
Happily, the Province of Ontario gets this. On Sept. 15, the province charged Volkswagen for violating provincial pollution laws, and soon after sent dozens of officers to raid Volkswagen Canada’s headquarters. That’s good for Ontario, which will almost certainly succeed in prosecuting Volkswagen. But it is an embarrassment for Canada’s government, which did not co-ordinate with Ontario to enforce Canada’s laws as well.
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If Environment Canada were serious about prosecuting Volkswagen, the financial implications are huge. Volkswagen imported more than 105,000 cars with the illegal “defeat device” into Canada, and each car represents a separate criminal act. Multiplied by the minimum $1 million penalty per act under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, that works out to a possible fine of $105 billion! It’s a pretty safe bet that if Canada’s government laid those charges, Volkswagen would beat a path to the negotiating table and volunteer to pay a few billion to settle the matter. That beats the alternative of a criminal trial, which could end with a fine so large as to destroy the company, which nobody wants.
So why hasn’t Environment Canada tried to do this? We’ve never received a convincing answer. Officials say that Canada can’t prosecute a German company like Volkswagen, but that is nonsense: the U.S. did it, and Ontario is doing it. Besides, there’s that guilty plea. If the staff can’t figure out how to prosecute a company that’s confessed its guilt, then what can they prosecute?
All Canadians are losing out over this inaction. The current government came to power promising to be on the side of the law, protecting the environment, being fiscally responsible, backing Canada’s auto builders and unions, and building green infrastructure. If that’s really true, and we hope it is, then the government needs to enforce the Canadian Environmental Protection Act; needs to punish polluters; needs to pick billions of dollars of low-hanging fruit; needs to stop Volkswagen competing against Canada’s carmakers by cheating; and needs to look on this event as an opportunity for our future.
Look at America: it cornered Volkswagen, and is better for it. For example, there’s the $2 billion US that Volkswagen is paying to build electric car charging stations across the U.S. — an investment in green infrastructure that will serve the American environment and American people for decades to come, without costing the taxpayer a penny.
Would Minister McKenna, or anyone else in the Trudeau government, please explain why that is a bad outcome and why Canada can’t do the same? If not, then hurry up please, and prosecute Volkswagen. It’s overdue, and the excuses aren’t persuasive.
Amir Attaran is a lawyer with Ecojustice’s law clinic at the University of Ottawa, Tim Gray is executive director with Environmental Defence and Kim Perrotta is executive director with Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment (CAPE).
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Hot, isolated, and running out of supplies, parts of Puerto Rico near desperation.
Four days after Hurricane Maria left Puerto Rico in a communications and power blackout, some regions outside of San Juan remained completely disconnected from the rest of the island — and the world.
JUNCOS, Puerto Rico — In the heat and humidity here in the central mountains, Meryanne Aldea fanned her bedridden mother with a piece of cardboard Sunday as the ailing woman lay on her side, relieving a large ulcer in her back.
The 63-year-old mother, Maria Dolores Hernandez, had cotton stuffed in her ears to keep flies out, since her now screenless windows were letting all sorts of bugs in. The gray-haired diabetic woman spoke with her daughter about her worries: that she would run out of prescription drugs, that they were almost out of generator fuel to keep her insulin refrigerated and to run the fans at night. With all the heat, she feared that her ulcer would become infected.
But she worried most about her daughter’s home on the floor above hers, which was destroyed by Hurricane Maria. The shrieking winds had ripped off the zinc roof and the pounding rains had soaked the unprotected rooms below. While the outer concrete walls were mostly intact, everything else was ruined, covered by dirty tree branches, leaves, glass and debris.
Aldea reached out to hold her mother’s hand.
“Relax,” she said. “It’s okay.”
Four days after a major hurricane battered Puerto Rico, leaving the entire island in a communications and power blackout, regions outside San Juan remained disconnected from the rest of the island — and the world. Juncos, in a mountainous region southeast of the capital that was slammed with Maria’s most powerful winds, remains isolated, alone, afraid.
For many residents, the challenge of accessing the essentials of modern life — gasoline, cash, food, water — began to sink in. And government officials had no answers for them. Estimates for the return of electricity and basic services will be measured not in days but in weeks and months. For those most vulnerable, far too long.
Many have been openly wondering when help will arrive, whether from local officials or from the federal government. The first thing some villagers ask when they see outsiders: “Are you FEMA?”
Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rosselló is warning that his government needs broader assistance from the federal government, calling on the Pentagon especially to provide more aid for law enforcement and transportation. Rosselló said he’s also worried that Congress will shortchange his island once the initial wave of emergency relief is gone.
“We still need some more help. This is clearly a critical disaster in Puerto Rico,” he said Sunday night. “It can’t be minimized and we can’t start overlooking us now that the storm passed, because the danger lurks.”
For federal agencies trying to respond to Maria, the situation in Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands is inescapably more challenging than the situations in Texas and Florida after hurricanes Harvey and Irma. It’s difficult to get onto the islands.
The airports and harbors here were severely damaged. That means the islands are more isolated than ever, even as the humanitarian crisis has worsened by the day.
So although massive amounts of food, water, fuel and other supplies have been dispatched by federal agencies and private organizations, with more resources on the way, this has been an obstacle-filled process.
Federal agencies have succeeded in clearing the use of the Port of San Juan for daytime operations, but other ports remain closed pending inspections. Many roads are blocked, inhibiting relief convoys. The Transportation Department has opened five airports in Puerto Rico and two in the U.S. Virgin Islands, but only for military and relief efforts.
Six commercial cargo ships have delivered supplies including food, water and generators to the Caribbean islands, and more supplies are on the way by ship from Florida and by air from Florida and Kentucky. Among the provisions: The Defense Logistics Agency is sending 124,000 gallons of diesel fuel to Puerto Rico.
In addition to concerns about basic survival, on the west side of the island worries have intensified about a ruptured dam that has been tenuously holding back the waters of Lake Guajataca. Government officials said Sunday that the “fissure” in the dam is “large and will collapse at any time.” Throngs of residents in nearby towns have been urged to evacuate. The dam’s failure could lead to massive amounts of water flowing unabated through coastal communities.
In Juncos, scores of homes were destroyed, and thousands of homes sustained damage, Mayor Alfredo Alejandro estimated. Four highways are inaccessible by car, and two bridges were harmed. Roofs of homes all over town are gone, and almost all government buildings were damaged.
Mountains typically brimming with trees and other vegetation are brown and desolate, stripped of all greenery. The mayor of 17 years said he discovered a river he never knew existed in his town, because it was always overgrown with plants. Curved bamboo lining the winding roads were left as bare sticks.
Less than a week ago, Alejandro said, “I had a pretty town.”
“Today I have a desert,” he said.
Puerto Rico’s executive director of emergency management said in an interview that aerial views of destruction in this region looked “more like a tornado than a hurricane.”
But Maria’s destruction in the town was just the beginning. The mayor said Juncos “anxiously” needs diesel, water, hospital equipment and satellite phones for local leadership.
Some local responders in Juncos were forced to clear area streets by hand with machetes, because the town doesn’t have enough chain saws.
Just two gas stations were functioning in the town, and lines stretched for more than half a mile. Some people walked and rode bicycles for miles with empty gas canisters in hand.
One of the town’s two supermarkets was open Sunday, and employees would let in only 10 people at a time to avoid chaos. Residents, who stood in line for hours, could purchase only rationed food. There is no functioning bank or cash machine in the entire municipality.
When Aldea, 37, and her 5-year-old daughter walked through her shell of a home in Juncos after the hurricane had passed, the child hardly said a word. She scoured her pink room, with pony stickers on its walls, and picked out a couple of soaked dolls and coloring books.
“We don’t have a house anymore,” Aldea explained to her daughter, Darangellie. “We’re going to have to start new with what we have.”
Aldea, who works as a secretary in the mayor’s office, is living with and taking care of her mother in the tiny room downstairs. Darangellie spends most of the days with a relative in town, but at night she sleeps with her mother. The child has asthma and needs to use a daily nebulizer treatment — requiring her mother to turn on their generator at night. They have enough diesel to power the generator for one more day.
She has a half-tank of gas left and can’t set aside the entire day that would be necessary to wait in line for more because she has to care for her daughter and mother. It doesn’t help that driving to town for her job — which usually takes seven minutes — now takes more than a half-hour because of blocked or inaccessible roads.
But Aldea remained calm. More than anything, she is thankful to be alive: “If I don’t stay strong, how can I take care of the two people who depend on me?”
Across town, a second-level three-bedroom apartment was ripped to shreds in the storm, the cooking appliances, kitchen counters and cabinets the only surviving evidence of the wooden structure.
Maribel Quiñones Rivera, 53, lived with her husband in the home for decades, raising her children and grandchildren there. During the hurricane and in the days that followed, she sought shelter with relatives in their apartment directly below.
On Sunday, she still hadn’t walked upstairs to see the debris up close. When asked why, she shook her head and cried. “I can’t,” she said.
To make matters worse, Quiñones Rivera and her relatives are out of cash — they used their last $30 to buy gasoline. They have five or six bottles of water left.
There are some moments of hope amid the misery in Juncos. On Sunday, about 30 people gathered in a small blue church for Mass. The priest apologized for the lack of a microphone and said the service would be brief.
Aida Sanchez, a member of the congregation, said she came to thank God.
“Because despite the circumstances,” she said, “we’re alive.”
Achenbach reported from Washington. Daniel Cassady in San Juan and Ed O’Keefe in Washington contributed to this report.
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