Energy and Commerce Chairman Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-NJ) released the following statement today after the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released their final “Affordable Clean Energy" rule, the Trump Administration’s plan to replace the Clean Power Plan:
“Two years and countless taxpayer dollars later, and this is what we get - a replacement for the Clean Power Plan that doesn’t set a single carbon reduction requirement, lets polluters off the hook, and utterly fails to value Americans’ health.
“This plan assumes that the long-term damage caused by releasing one ton of carbon into the air costs as little as a single dollar. That is tantamount to saying the climate crisis imposes virtually no costs, and virtually no one will get hurt. Tell the homeowners in California who have watched their homes ravaged by record-breaking wildfires that there are no costs of climate change. Tell the farmers and ranchers who have lost everything to prolonged droughts and floods that there are no costs of climate change. Tell the people of New Jersey, the Midwest and Puerto Rico who have lost their loved ones, their homes and their businesses to superstorms that there are no costs of climate change.
“It simply defies commonsense to assume, as the Trump ‘Dirty Power Scam’ does, that virtually no harm is done by emitting more carbon pollution. It is both dangerous and categorically wrong, and I will fight this senseless proposal. We cannot condemn our children and grandchildren to live on a planet that is beyond our capacity to repair."
