Environmental Justice Advocates to EPA: Fulfill Your Obligation to Protect Vulnerable Communities from Climate and Transportation Pollution
EPA rollbacks are a catastrophic failure of policy and of morality, costing millions of lives and trillions of public dollars
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 30, 2025
Contact: Ashley Sullivan, ashley.sullivan@weact.org, 1 (917) 837 – 1183
WASHINGTON – This week, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) revealed their plan to upend the endangerment finding and clean air protections that cemented the agency’s authority to protect the public from climate and transportation pollution. This aims to erase limits on greenhouse gas emissions, including from vehicles, and intends to stop even future administrations from regulating climate pollution. In response, the Clean Air for the Long Haul coalition condemns this move as a clear betrayal of the EPA’s mission and settled, overwhelming science. This represents an unjust policy failure which will have the greatest toll on low-income and communities of color.
Clean Air for the Long Haul shared the following response:
“Recently updated EPA protections we fought hard to strengthen were a step in the right direction towards cleaner air and healthier communities. Now, the EPA is putting the profits of polluting industries over people and choosing to ignore its duty by rolling back these advancements. These actions guarantee decades of avoidable, cruel health impacts and environmental harms, with the first and worst impacts experienced by people of color and low-income communities.
Each year, our communities bear the brunt of growing billion-dollar weather disasters caused by climate pollution – including historic flooding and fires – that claim thousands of lives. Extreme heat causes more deaths than all these disasters combined, and people of color are more exposed and vulnerable.
All the while our communities are also choking on vehicle pollution. Trucks and buses are less than 10 percent of U.S. vehicles, but produce more than 50 percent of soot and ozone pollution from transportation. Almost 80 million people of color live with at least one failing grade for ozone and/or soot air pollution. This has caused generations to suffer with asthma, heart and lung disease, and cancer.
We are not just statistics, but people living through the unprecedented harm caused by this pollution that jeopardizes the health of our families and neighborhoods every single day. The EPA is required to address these threats and uphold its responsibility to protect us.”
Ayo Wilson, Co-Director at West End Revitalization Association shared:
“The EPA’s mission is to ‘protect human health and the environment,’ ensuring that ‘Americans have clean air, land, and water’ with efforts to ‘reduce environmental risks’ being ‘based on the best available scientific information.’ The decision to rescind the endangerment finding and limits on tailpipe emissions is an absolute rejection of its mission and responsibility to Americans to safeguard them from toxic chemicals and environmental contamination and illness in favor of standing with and promoting harmful industry lies and propagating fossil fuel expansion.
In Alamance County, North Carolina, citizens were assaulted by Tropical Storm Chantal on July 6, causing rapid flooding, damage to infrastructure, and loss of life. All summer, massive heat waves and heat advisories have been issued across the state of North Carolina. It is widely accepted science and common sense that greenhouse gas emissions exacerbate these adverse weather events, making them more frequent, more violent and more widespread. The EPA’s decision to abandon its responsibility to the American people in favor of producing profits for fossil fuel companies will only make things worse. We will not abandon our communities and neighbors.”
Yosef Robele, Federal Policy Manager at WE ACT for Environmental Justice shared:
“Rescinding the endangerment finding and repealing vehicle emissions standards is a dangerous betrayal of the EPA’s core duty to protect public health from climate and air pollution. It guts the agency’s core mandate to safeguard the public, and stalls progress toward clean and affordable transportation. These protections are hard-won, non-negotiable, and essential to a livable future, especially for communities overburdened by climate change and harmful air pollutants from cars, trucks, and buses.
We will not back down and demand the EPA reaffirm its commitment to public health and environmental protection by strengthening — not dismantling — the safeguards that are a matter of life or death for our communities.”
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Clean Air For The Long Haul, a nationwide coalition of environmental justice groups, coordinates federal rulemaking campaigns, centering overburdened communities, to reduce air pollution from power plants, cars, and trucks. The coalition seeks to catalyze the environmental justice movement through federal emissions reductions targeting United States power and transportation sectors. Coalition member organizations include: Alternatives for Community and Environment, Duwamish River Community Coalition, GreenDoor Initiative, New Jersey Environmental Justice Alliance, South Bronx Unite, Texas Environmental Justice Advocacy Services, WE ACT for Environmental Justice, West End Revitalization Association, and Wisconsin Green Muslims.