WASHINGTON - The Environmental Protection Agency has announced plans to disregard decades of its own science and remove the finding that greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) are harmful to human health. This announcement includes removing the legal basis for regulating carbon pollution under the Clean Air Act, creating serious implications for the law that protects our air.

“We ignore reality at our own peril,” said Heather McTeer Toney, executive director, Beyond Petrochemicals. “No matter what the EPA decides to do, the consequences of climate change have arrived. Daily pollution and climate change are causing harm today, and it will only get worse if the EPA moves this plan forward. Floods, fires, droughts, and hurricanes are here with more intensity and frequency. The lives these storms take are as real as those we lose from the pollution blanketing our skies each day. None of us deserve leaders who make it easier to hurt our families and get away with it.”

Among many sources of dangerous pollution, this change will likely remove compliance and emissions standards on carbon pollution for petrochemical facilities. Petrochemical production is responsible for five percent of total US GHG emissions. Even without this repeal, the industry’s share of US carbon pollution is projected to increase by up to 32 percent over the next five years.

“It is easy to feel helpless in the face of this reckless decision, but we are not,” added Toney. “Over the last three years, frontline communities fighting the expansion of the petrochemical industry have prevented more than 41 million tons of new carbon pollution a year. We will continue to support those communities working to make our air cleaner, even while the EPA won’t.”