The chief of the Environmental Protection Agency said Monday that the Obama administration and regulators will cash in on the regulatory successes in 2015 by doubling down on global warming regulations in 2016.
Writing on the environmental group’s website, EPA head administrator Gina McCarthy stated that a whole new set of rules regulating the environment will take place this upcoming year, including regulations limiting methane gas ruptures and rules cutting emissions from large commercial vehicles.
“Heading into 2016, EPA is building on a monumental year for climate action—and we’re not slowing down in the year ahead,” McCarthy wrote, adding, “So we’re hitting the ground running.”
She went on to lay out a handful of the agency’s lofty goals, most of which will be instituted for the purpose of making sure the U.S. comes in line with the climate agreement hammered out in Paris last year.
Along with monitoring the pollution in the U.S, according to a report by The Hill, the EPA intends to lobby for corporate financing of global warming stipulations under the Paris Agreement, as well as to provide environmental monitoring for foreign countries, effectively expanding their reach beyond the U.S.
“We will finalize a proposal to improve fuel economy and cut carbon pollution from heavy-duty vehicles, which could avoid a billion metric tons of carbon pollution and save 75 billion gallons of fuel by 2027,” McCarthy wrote.
She added: “We’ll also finalize rules to limit methane leaks from oil and gas operations—which could avoid up to 400,000 metric tons of a climate pollutant 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide by 2025. Meanwhile, we’re doubling the distance our cars go on a gallon of gas by 2025.”
Along with its proposals limiting methane gas leaks and pollution from commercial trucks, the agency’s head wrote, the agency will also uses its considerable powers to make sure that the federal government and state governments comply with the Clean Power Plan, which was enacted last year jointly by President Obama and the EPA.
“Just as importantly, the Paris Agreement and the Clean Power Plan are helping mobilize private capital all over the world toward low-carbon investments,” McCarthy said about the government’s ability to motivate private markets into substantially lowering the world’s carbon emissions.
The head of the EPA concluded her blog post by stating a belief many environmental regulators share. She cloaked the agency’s mission — that of lessening global warming in the world at large — in the blanket of morality.
“Climate change is a moral issue, a health issue, and a jobs issue — and that’s why the strong majority of Americans want the federal government to do something about it, and support the strong outcome in Paris,” McCarthy wrote.
