Two pieces you have to read:
Margaret Talbot’s simple and clear and devastating reporting about Scott Pruitt and how as head of the Environmental Protection Agency he is pursuing an agenda in favor of big business and its heedless attitude toward environmental protection. Key passage:
In November, Pruitt proposed the repeal of an Obama-era rule that imposed Clean Air Act emissions standards on glider vehicles—heavy-duty trucks that pair new cabs and chassis with older, dirtier engines. Gliders are slightly cheaper than all-new trucks, in part because they aren’t equipped with modern pollution controls. They make up only five per cent of the heavy-duty-truck fleet, but they emit a disproportionate amount of dangerous pollution. Steve Silverman, a former E.P.A. attorney, who retired in January, worked on the glider rule. “We’re not talking only about greenhouse gases,” he said. “These trucks put out diesel particulate matter, a human-lung carcinogen.” In 2016, an agency analysis concluded that gliders produce almost three hundred thousand tons of nitrogen-oxide pollution a year, along with nearly eight thousand tons of diesel-particulate pollution. Agency scientists estimate that a single year of glider pollution causes as many as sixteen hundred premature deaths.
At a public hearing in December, environmental and public-health groups such as the American Lung Association sent representatives to speak for keeping the rule. That was expected. But so did Volvo Group North America, which produces both Volvo and Mack trucks. Susan Alt, Volvo North America’s vice-president of public affairs, testified that the proposed repeal “makes a mockery of the massive investments we’ve made to develop low-emission-compliant technology.” The American Trucking Association also testified against a repeal. Bob Nuss, whom the association named the 2017 Truck Dealer of the Year, flew at his own expense from Minnesota to Washington, D.C., to attend the hearing. Nuss said, “I told them, ‘Maybe it’s only five per cent of the trucks, but how would we all feel if five per cent of the trucks didn’t have to stop for a school bus or obey the speed limit?’ Sneaking around, avoiding emissions compliance, filling the air with soot—it’s just not right.”
The strongest support for rescinding the rule comes from the largest producer of gliders, Fitzgerald. Last year, Fitzgerald, which is based in Tennessee, hosted a campaign event for Trump. In May, Pruitt met with the company’s founder and C.E.O., Tommy Fitzgerald. Two months later, Fitzgerald and two glider dealers wrote a letter to Pruitt contending that the agency lacked the authority to regulate gliders under the Clean Air Act, because “the engine, transmission, and typically the rear axle” are “not new.”
Pruitt soon announced that the E.P.A. would reconsider the rule, and precisely echoed Fitzgerald’s claim that gliders fell into a regulatory gray area because they contained “new and used” components.
Staff writer Rachel Aviv writes one story after another about people in excruciatingly painful situations. This week she writes (in “How a Young Woman Lost her Identity”) about a woman who suffers from an extreme form of dissociation, which puzzles everyone she knows, especially her devoted mother.
Bonus: the cover illustration by the brilliant Christoph Niemann (“Trompe-l’Oeil”) becomes an animation when you view it in digital form. Check out the story behind that here.
another eye opens 