Donald Trump

The omens have been accumulating for months, as bits of information dribble out of the regulatory rumor mill in Washington, D.C. Now we have the most concrete reports yet that the U.S. EPA plans to modify exhaust emission limits for vehicles in model years 2022 through 2025. The EPA delivered its...

As the auto industry and environmental groups count down the days until the NHTSA releases proposals to revise fuel-economy standards, surveys show one industry wants the standards to stay just as they are. That is the auto-parts supply industry, according to a study released Thursday morning by...

Last Tuesday, EPA administrator Scott Pruitt said the agency does not intend to let California set the agenda for national emission limits on vehicles. He suggested to Bloomberg the EPA plans to cut emission rules aggressively to respond to carmakers' pleas for easing of the corporate average fuel...

Now, it's war, in the words of California's lead emission regulator. In what Bloomberg News called a "wide-ranging interview" with EPA chief Scott Pruitt, he indicated the agency does not intend to let California set the agenda for national emission limits on vehicles. Bringing California into line...

It is now abundantly clear that the Trump administration in the U.S. is staffed with climate-science denialists and committed promoters for the greater extraction, sale, and combustion of fossil fuels. That includes coal, the dirtiest major fossil fuel of them all, with the highest emissions of...

The federal gas tax, which was supposed to pay for repairs and expansion to roads maintained or funded by the national government, now does nothing of the kind. Congress last raised the U.S. federal gas tax a quarter of a century ago in 1993, to the 18.5-cents-per-gallon level it remains at today...

With the release of proposed new and lower fuel-economy rules expected from the NHTSA by March 30, many eyes have turned to the powerful California Air Resources Board. The state's pioneering role in reducing emissions and cutting air pollution predates even the existence of the U.S. Environmental...

It's been clear that under the Trump administration, the NHTSA and EPA plan to roll back linked fuel-economy rules and emission limits on new vehicles. Now a possible justification that will be used has emerged—and it's not the one many advocates had expected. According to a Bloomberg report...

If a marketer talked enthusiastically about "healthy delicious cyanide," what would you think? You may wish to apply those judgments to mentions of "beautiful clean coal" by President Donald Trump, who used the phrase in Tuesday's State of the Union address. Trump claimed his administration had...

You may recall that President Donald Trump made some ambitious and audacious campaign promises about his plans to revive America's dwindling coal industry. Two weeks ago, The Washington Post fact-checked the president's delivery on those promises after his first year in office—in multiples of...

As automakers await the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's new fuel-economy rules for 2022 through 2025, due March 30, regulators from California and Washington are still hammering out the specifics. A meeting between state and federal regulators on fuel-economy and emissions targets...

Mother Nature doesn't pay attention to politics. As a pair of articles in The Washington Post last week highlighted, climate change proceeds apace regardless of the daily news cycle. In other words, unless the U.S. and the world ramp up the pace of reducing carbon-dioxide emissions from all...

The production values are high and the message is clear in a video released Tuesday by The Sierra Club. The environmental advocacy group 's goal is simple: highlight the contrast between Ford Motor Company's claims of sustainability goals and its behind-the-scenes efforts to roll back U.S...

It's been hanging out there in limbo for more than six months: the answer to the question of what happens to gas-mileage rules under Trump. Given the daily political turmoil emanating from Washington, D.C., the fate of corporate average fuel economy rules may have gotten lost in the noise. But for...

For much of last year, U.S. Energy Secretary Rick Perry pursued a plan that, in essence, would prop up the financially challenged U.S. coal and nuclear industries. His proposal, submitted to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission last fall, provided financial subsidies to electric-generation...

By now it's clear that the Trump Administration is doing everything it can to end U.S. government efforts to address climate change. Climate-science deniers sit in powerful government positions, language on climate change has been eradicated from websites, and the U.S. is now the sole nation in the...

EPA head Scott Pruitt will likely go down as one of the most controversial agency chiefs in that agency's history of almost 50 years. The former Oklahoma attorney general, who sued the EPA 14 times on behalf of fossil-fuel interests during the Obama administration, has a radically different view of...

Following President Donald Trump's decision to pull the United States from the Paris Climate Accord—a global pact to reduce carbon output and curb climate change—only two other nations had not signed the treaty. Now, the U.S. sits alone and isolated internationally on climate policy...

Following years of debate, the EPA said earlier this month it will study the possibilities of cutting the amount of ethanol in the United States' gasoline supply. Since 2007, the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) has required growing amounts of ethanol to be blended into U.S. fuel supplies, with...

EPA head Scott Pruitt told miners in Kentucky on Monday that he intends to begin dismantling former President Barack Obama's signature climate-change agenda effort to curb greenhouse gas emissions from coal power plants. Standing alongside Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Pruitt told...