Contact: Kayla Ritchie, [email protected] (CJA) / Ashley Sullivan, [email protected], (917) 837-1183 (WE ACT/EJLF) / Isella Ramirez, [email protected], (323) 854-1857 / (MFN) / Prerna Sampat, [email protected] (CEED/Platform for a Just Climate) / Stephanie Herron, [email protected], 802-251-0203 ext.707 (EJHA)
Coalition of environmental justice networks representing millions of frontline and fenceline communities demand justice: Revoking the Endangerment Finding and vehicle standards is unacceptable and we will keep fighting for our rights.
NATIONWIDE – Today, the Trump administration’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced its final decision to revoke the Endangerment Finding and vehicle emissions regulations. In response, the coalition made up of, the Moving Forward Network (MFN), Climate Justice Alliance (CJA), Platform for a Just Climate (formerly referred to as the Equitable & Just National Climate Platform), Environmental Justice Health Alliance for Chemical Policy Reform (EJHA), and the Environmental Justice Leadership Forum (EJLF) shares that the injustice shown through this decision only strengthens our resolve to hold the EPA accountable to its mission to protect human health and the environment, while continuing to fight to protect the communities we represent across the U.S.
Last September, the coalition submitted written comments to the proposed repeal- signed by 100 organizations and individuals, alongside a powerful collection of testimonies that capture the real-world impacts of climate and transportation pollution, and frontline and fenceline communities’ need for robust environmental and health protections. As the coalition underscored, the EPA must be held accountable for violating its mission, by prioritizing the corporate polluter agenda while putting millions of lives at risk. This administration must answer for its betrayal of the public, especially environmental justice communities, who continue to be put in the greatest danger. With this decision on the heels of the EPA’s 55th anniversary, the coalition furthers our call on the Agency to renew its commitment to environmental justice, restore essential funding, and ensure protections for current and future generations.
“The Endangerment Finding ensures that the EPA can do its job to protect our health and well-being by curbing pollution. By revoking this, the administration continues to show that their priorities are grounded in sacrificing our health, endangering communities and commodifying the Earth for more corporate extraction and profits, at the expense of our future.” -Mar Zepeda Salazar, Legislative Director, Climate Justice Alliance
“One year ago, Trump rolled into office with a barrage of executive orders tearing down environmental protections and making corporate polluters’ toxic wishlist into his top priority. Now, Trump’s EPA is rolling back a critical scientific determination, the endangerment finding, opening the door to more pollution, more asthma attacks, more heat‑related illnesses, and more fires and storms fueled by climate change in our communities. But here is what this Administration needs to know: we’re still here, we’re still united, and we are still resisting these attacks on environmental justice communities. We refuse to accept a future where our communities are turned into sacrifice zones so corporate polluters can profit.” -Byron Gudiel, Executive Director, Center for Earth Energy & Democracy (CEED), convener of the Platform for a Just Climate.
“The EPA’s repeal of the Endangerment Finding is a harmful step backward for communities that have shouldered the greatest pollution burdens for generations. Environmental justice communities remain on the frontlines of air and climate hazards, and this rollback threatens to deepen those inequities. The EPA’s mission is to protect human health and the environment, and that responsibility must be fulfilled equitably across all communities. We will continue to speak out and organize for a safe, just, and healthy future where our communities can truly thrive.” -Denise Patel, Director of Organizing, WE ACT for Environmental Justice, Environmental Justice Leadership Forum
“The revoking of the Endangerment Finding and the vehicle standards puts American lives at risk. We will continue to uplift the EPA’s mission to protect human health and the environment. We continue to be committed to fighting for clean air and a healthy environment. Justice is in the air.” -Isella Ramirez, Moving Forward Network
“EPA has the authority and moral obligation to do more, not less, to reduce the harms from toxic air pollution and climate change, both of which are disproportionately concentrated in poor and primarily of color neighborhoods. Instead of protecting public health, protecting the environment and creating a 21st century economy based on innovation and collective care instead of extraction and sacrifice zones, this administration wants to take us back to a time before the EPA existed– when rivers caught on fire, children were poisoned by lead, smog choked communities, and average life expectancy in the U.S. was about five years shorter. Communities like the ones that make up EJHA who are poisoned by industrial and vehicle pollution are sick and tired of sacrificing our families’ health for the profits of corporate polluters”. -Stephanie Herron, Environmental Justice Health Alliance for Chemical Policy Reform (EJHA)
Additional Background:
The comments shared by this coalition provide a specific rationale for opposing the EPA’s flawed decision rescind its 2009 Endangerment Finding and GHG Vehicle Standards. This includes that:
- This decision denies the lived experience, backed by science, of the effects of pollution on public health, the environment, and the climate.
- This decision does not consider the targeted and harmful effects that this “historic deregulation” effort will have on workers.
- This decision is based on flawed science.
- This decision is unlawful.
- This decision does not consider the benefits of climate and environmental protection.
The EPA was built 55 years ago in response to the organizing and advocacy efforts from communities across the country as a call to protect human health and the environment, and serves several critical functions, including developing and enforcing regulations, providing grants, and studying environmental impacts. Since the beginning of the second Trump administration, we have witnessed dozens of unprecedented EPA rollbacks of hard-fought, peer-reviewed, research-based, and life-saving regulations, as well as the termination of millions of dollars in critical grants. For these reasons, the coalition demands that the EPA be held accountable for its deadly decision to rescind the Endangerment Finding and vehicle emissions standards.
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