From PennEnvironment (http://www.pennenvironment.org):
The administration has cut the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) budget by 26% ($2.4 billion) in his proposed 2021 federal budget, including a 71% cut to the EPA’s Environmental Justice program. It is also proposing to cut $219 million from EPA’s research budget at a time when it is critical to have the latest science on greenhouse gas pollution. For instance, Penn State scientists recently discovered that current methane emissions may be eight times higher than current EPA estimates for oil and gas facilities in Southwestern Pennsylvania.
Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas that traps heat in our atmosphere at a rate 87 times higher than carbon dioxide over a 20 year timeline. Clean Air Council has collected thousands of public comments opposing the administration’s proposed removal of methane from the 2016 New Source Performance Standards (NSPS) for oil and gas facilities. If finalized, this rule would allow rampant methane leakage at oil and gas extraction and transportation infrastructure. We need a fully funded EPA armed with the latest climate science in order to fully enforce current methane leakage standards and understand that the proposed rollback of these standards runs counter to EPA’s mission.
Go to http://salsa4.salsalabs.com/o/51176/p/dia/action4/common/public/?action_KEY=26627 to tell the administration and your other federal elected officials you need a fully funded EPA so it can fully enforce current methane pollution standards and scrap its proposal to roll back critical methane standards.
2019 was recorded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) as the second hottest year ever globally – only 0.07 of a degree Fahrenheit behind 2016. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) reported that 2010-2019 was also the hottest decade ever recorded. According to NOAA, the five hottest years ever recorded have all occurred since 2015.
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