The audacity is astounding.

While Governors, healthcare workers and communities all across the nation wrestle with the coronavirus, Trump is busy giving the fossil fuel industry license to pollute.

It’s true. Just days apart, the American people were told to prepare for the deadliest two weeks of Covid-19 — a virus that affects the respiratory system — and that the EPA would suspend or rollback environmental regulations affecting air pollution. This is an outrage.

Email the EPA today and demand that this agency place the health of the American people above the profit of polluting industries.

Pollution and poor air quality increase incidences of respiratory illness, and makes thousands of Americans particularly vulnerable to Covid-19. A new study directly links higher air pollution to higher death rates from the virus.¹ To relax air quality regulation in the midst of a pandemic that attacks the respiratory system seems unthinkable. And yet, that is what Trump’s EPA just did.

From day one, Trump has made it his mission to dismantle environmental protections in favor of the big polluters — enacting nearly 100 regulatory rollbacks so far. The most recent, taken by EPA Administrator and former coal lobbyist, Andrew Wheeler, indefinitely suspends the monitoring and reporting requirements of polluting industries. So, while we struggle with a deadly health crisis, Trump has given fossil fuel industries the go ahead to poison our communities without oversight or repercussions. Imagine the coal ash that will be dumped, the methane gas that will flare and the excessive discharge of heavy metals like arsenic, lead and mercury that will be released into our water supplies.

We need your help in emailing the EPA to demand that this agency protect rather than hurt the health outcomes of the nation.

There’s more. Trump’s EPA also announced rollbacks to Obama-era fuel economy regulations; climate legislation aimed to reduce carbon emissions by requiring automakers to increase fuel efficiency by 5% each year until 2026. Under Trump’s new plan, fuel efficiency requirements will plummet to 1.5%, increasing greenhouse gas emissions by a projected 1 billion tons in the next 20 years - causing higher rates of asthma, cardiovascular disease and respiratory failure. Loosening air quality regulations during a pandemic that affects the respiratory system is not only appalling, it's deadly. Clearly, Trump’s EPA is working against its own mandate to protect and is complicit in endangering the health of the nation.

Send an email to the EPA and demand that it considers the health of the nation over the interests of the fossil fuel industry.

The Trump Administration’s blatant disregard for science has never been so cruel. Hundreds of thousands of people are expected to die from Covid-19. Job losses are staggering, approaching numbers not seen since the Great Depression. And while healthcare workers put their lives on the line and essential workers put themselves at risk each day, the multi-billion dollar fossil fuel industry, along with their allies in the Trump Administration are capitalizing on the pandemic — exacerbating the coronavirus crisis and the climate crisis for a profit. 

This is unacceptable. We at the Chesapeake Climate Action Network are putting pressure on the EPA to do its job. At a time when the world is experiencing the worst public health crisis in a century we should be doing everything in our power to protect our most precious resources - clean air and clean water. Help us as we struggle to create a better world today and for the future. Email the administrator of the EPA today.

Sincerely,

Mike Tidwell
Executive Director
Chesapeake Climate Action Network

--

1) "New Research Links Air Pollution to Higher Coronavirus Death Rates," New York Times, April 7, 2020