Consumer Impacts of Biden Administration Repeals of Trump Administration Environmental Protection Agency Changes

 Still feeling whiplash from the past four years? This table explains the actions President Biden has taken to rollback Trump Administration edicts that adversely impacted your air, water, and health in his first few days in office.

Metric	Trump	Biden	Impact for Consumers
Fuel Efficiency	Reduced fuel efficiency standards to 40 MPG	Reinstates fuel efficiency standards for cars to 54 MPG by 2025, overrules Trump	Greater fuel efficiency means we pay less at the pump and less CO2 go into the air; additional cost to car buyers is nominal
Auto Emission Standards: California has had some of the strictest auto emissions standards, for 30 years, which manufacturers must meet	Attempted to circumvent the CA stricter emissions rules and overrule states rights to adopt the loser federal standards of the Trump Administration, even though many automakers objected	The court case against California standards, which are adopted by 15 states and the DOC, will be dropped	Good news for people living in:  California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington, as well as the District of Columbia.
Sale of Alaska Wilderness Oil Leases	Approved for January 2, 2021, subject to a 30-day comment period, but Trump tried to accelerate this to 16-days to avoid Biden’s reversal	Not in favor of drilling in the pristine and fragile Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, leases will not be approved	There is a glut of oil already in the US, this is just an industry grab, at the expense of the environment, no leases are better for ANWR.
Government Accountability	Trump’s Cabinet has rewritten myriad rules in government agencies, including the EPA. Trump created the onerous Cost/Benefit methodology which diminishes public health impacts and prioritizes business considerations for adopting environmental rules.	Biden has put a freeze on implementation of any Trump rules until further analysis. Aims to prevent the midnight regulatory changes pushed by a lame duck president.	The scientific community was uniformly opposed to the Trump cabinet ignoring and weakening scientific findings to create rules favorable for a few. This will prevent unhealthy changes from taking effect and adversely impacting public health through ground water, air, and product contaminants.

Happy New Year!

This posting was written by Roberta Winter, author, independent journalist, and healthcare advocate, who has continuously published this column since November 2007.