FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Coalition of environmental justice networks representing millions of frontline and fenceline communities demand justice: Revoking the Endangerment Finding and vehicle standards is unacceptable and we will keep fighting for our rights.
Press Contacts:
Ashley Sullivan, ashley.sullivan@weact.org, (917) 837-1183 (WE ACT/EJLF)
Isella Ramirez, info@movingforwardnetwork.com, (323) 854-1857 (MFN)
Prerna Sampat. press@ceed.org, (CEED/Platform for a Just Climate)
Kayla Ritchie, kayla@unbendablemedia.com, (CJA)
Stephanie Herron, sherron@comingcleaninc.org. 802-251-0203 ext.707 (EJHA)
NATIONWIDE – Today, the Trump administration’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced its final decision to revoke the Endangerment Finding and vehicle emissions regulations. In response, the coalition made up of, the Moving Forward Network (MFN). Climate Justice Alliance (CJA). Platform for a Just Climate (formerly referred to as the Equitable & Just National Climate Platform), Environmental Justice Health Alliance for Chemical Policy Reform (EJHA), and the Environmental Justice Leadership Forum (EJLF) shares that the injustice shown through this decision only strengthens our resolve to hold the EPA accountable to its mission to protect human health and the environment, while continuing to fight to protect the communities we represent across the U.S.
Last September, the coalition submitted written comments to the proposed repeal-signed by 100 organizations and individuals, alongside a powerful collection of testimonies that capture the real-world impacts of climate and transportation pollution, and frontline and fenceline communities’ need for robust environmental and health protections. As the coalition underscored. the EPA must be held accountable for violating its mission, by prioritizing the corporate polluter agenda while putting millions of lives at risk. This administration must answer for its betrayal of the public, especially environmental justice communities, who continue to be put in the greatest danger. With this decision on the heels of the EPA’s 55th anniversary, the coalition furthers our call on the Agency to renew its commitment to environmental justice, restore essential funding, and ensure protections for current and future generations.
“The Endangerment Finding ensures that the EPA can do its job to protect our health and well-being by curbing pollution. By revoking this, the administration continues to show that their priorities are grounded in sacrificing our health, endangering communities and commodifying the Earth for more corporate extraction and profits, at the expense of our future.” – Mar Zepeda Salazar, Legislative Director, Climate Justice Alliance
“One year ago, Trump rolled into office with a barrage of executive orders tearing down environmental protections and making corporate polluters’ toxic wishlist into his top priority. Now, Trump’s EPA is rolling back a critical scientific determination, the endangerment finding, opening the door to more pollution, more asthma attacks, more heat-related illnesses, and more fires and storms fueled by climate change in our communities. But here is what this Administration needs to know: we’re still here, we’re still united, and we are still resisting these attacks on environmental justice communities. We refuse to accept a future where our communities are turned into sacrifice zones so corporate polluters can profit.” – Byron Gudiel, Executive Director, Center for Earth Energy & Democracy (CEED), convener of the Platform for a Just Climate.
“The EPA’s repeal of the Endangerment Finding is a harmful step backward for communities that have shouldered the greatest pollution burdens for generations. Environmental justice communities remain on the frontlines of air and climate hazards, and this rollback threatens to deepen those inequities. The EPA’s mission is to protect human health and the environment, and that responsibility must be fulfilled equitably across all communities. We will continue to speak out and organize for a safe, just, and healthy future where our communities can truly thrive.” – Denise Patel, Director of Organizing, WE ACT for Environmental Justice, Environmental Justice Leadership Forum
“The revoking of the Endangerment Finding and the vehicle standards puts American lives at risk. We will continue to uplift the EPA’s mission to protect human health and the environment. We continue to be committed to fighting for clean air and a healthy environment. Justice is in the air.” – Isella Ramirez, Moving Forward Network
“EPA has the authority and moral obligation to do more, not less, to reduce the harms from toxic air pollution and climate change, both of which are disproportionately concentrated in poor and primarily of color neighborhoods. Instead of protecting public health, protecting the environment and creating a 21st century economy based on innovation and collective care instead of extraction and sacrifice zones, this administration wants to take us back to a time before the EPA existed- when rivers caught on fire, children were poisoned by lead, smog choked communities, and average life expectancy in the U.S. was about five years shorter. Communities like the ones that make up EJHA who are poisoned by industrial and vehicle pollution are sick and tired of sacrificing our families’ health for the profits of corporate polluters”. – Stephanie Herron, Environmental Justice Health Alliance for Chemical Policy Reform (EJHA)
Additional Background:
The comments shared by this coalition provide a specific rationale for opposing the EPA’s flawed decision rescind its 2009 Endangerment Finding and GHG Vehicle Standards. This includes that:
This decision denies the lived experience, backed by science, of the effects of pollution on public health, the environment, and the climate.
- This decision denies the lived experience, backed by science, of the effects of pollution on public health, the environment, and the climate.
- This decision does not consider the targeted and harmful effects that this “historic deregulation” effort will have on workers.
- This decision is based on flawed science.
- This decision is unlawful.
- This decision does not consider the benefits of climate and environmental protection.
The EPA was built 55 years ago in response to the organizing and advocacy efforts from communities across the country as a call to protect human health and the environment, and serves several critical functions, including developing and enforcing regulations, providing grants, and studying environmental impacts. Since the beginning of the second Trump administration, we have witnessed dozens of unprecedented EPA rollbacks of hard-fought, peer-reviewed, research-based, and life-saving regulations, as well as the termination of millions of dollars in critical grants. For these reasons, the coalition demands that the EPA be held accountable for its deadly decision to rescind the Endangerment Finding and vehicle emissions standards.
About This Coalition
Center for Earth, Energy & Democracy (CEED) is a convener of the Platform for a Just Climate and is a member of the Climate Justice Alliance (CJA) and the Environmental Justice Leadership Forum (EJLF).
The Platform for a Just Climate is a coalition of EJ groups and national environmental organizations from across the country united around a shared commitment to ending the environmental racism that has left economically disadvantaged communities, Indigenous communities, Black communities, and communities of color exposed to disproportionate levels of toxic pollution and bearing the brunt of the climate crisis. Our coalition has stood strong for over five years around our shared vision for a just climate future — and our platform has grown to include over 300 co-signer organizations from all over the country.
The Environmental Justice Leadership Forum (EJLF) is a national coalition of nearly 40 organizations in 22 states who work to ensure that a diverse grassroots perspective is reflected in federal, state, and local programming and policy decisions. Organizations are based in red, blue, and swing states, including those in Appalachia, the Deep South, Northwest, Midwest, Northeast and Southwest regions. EJLF members represent Black, Latinx, Indigenous and low-income communities in large cities to rural areas. These groups are actively working together to advance key climate justice and environmental policy to ensure the protection and advancement of communities of color and low-income communities throughout the U.S. The EJLF is hosted by WE ACT for Environmental Justice. Learn more at ejforum.org and follow us @ejforum.
The Moving Forward Network (MFN) is a national network of over 50 member organizations that centers grassroots, frontline-community knowledge, expertise, and engagement from communities across the US that bear the negative impacts of the global freight transportation system. MFN builds partnerships between these community leaders, academia, labor, big green organizations, and others to protect communities from the impacts of freight. Its diverse membership facilitates an integrated and geographically dispersed advocacy strategy that incorporates organizing, communications, research, legal and technical assistance, leadership development and movement building. This strategy respects multiple forms of expertise and builds collective power. The Moving Forward Network is a project of Windward Fund
Climate Justice Alliance (CJA) formed in 2013 to create a new center of gravity in the climate movement by uniting frontline communities and organizations into a formidable force. Our translocal organizing strategy and mobilizing capacity is building a Just Transition away from extractive systems of production, consumption and political oppression, and towards resilient, regenerative and equitable economies. We believe that the process of transition must place race, gender and class at the center of the solutions equation in order to make it a truly Just Transition.
Environmental Justice Health Alliance for Chemical Policy Reform is a national network of grassroots Environmental and Economic Justice organizations and advocates in communities that are disproportionately impacted by toxic chemicals from legacy contamination, ongoing exposure to polluting facilities and health-harming chemicals in household products. EJHA supports a just transition towards safer chemicals and a pollution-free economy that leaves no community or worker behind. The EJHA network model features leadership of, by, and for Environmental Justice groups with support from additional allied groups and individual experts.
