The Trump EPA is Cutting Back Its Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program
Cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency's climate pollution monitoring could allow the country's biggest contributors to climate change to further spin, twist, and lie about the damage they cause.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is rolling back its Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program (GHGRP), according to an investigative report from ProPublica. GHGRP previously required greenhouse gas (GHG) data reporting from large climate polluters. The data is used to fuel information and analysis, with the EPA staff helping to: “track and compare facilities' greenhouse gas emissions, identify opportunities to cut pollution, minimize wasted energy, and save money. States, cities, and other communities can use EPA’s greenhouse gas data to find high-emitting facilities in their area, compare emissions between similar facilities, and develop common-sense climate policies.”
Journalists, researchers, and analysts—The Cocklebur included—use this data to report on GHG pollution that leads to climate change and more severe weather events. GHGRP information is the basis for the important Inventory of U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks (Inventory), the annual document prepared by EPA that estimates the total greenhouse gas emissions across all sectors of the economy. The EPA has been releasing this data for the last 25 years.
“The bottom line is this is a giveaway to emitters, just letting them off the hook entirely,” Rachel Cleetus, senior policy director with the Climate and Energy program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, told ProPublica. “Not tracking the data doesn’t make the climate crisis any less real. This is just putting our heads in the sand.”
EPA GHG experts produce information that document which industries contribute the most climate pollution:
And to track GHG pollution by industry over time:
On the granular level, EPA GHG pollution data equips decision-makers and analysts with the information required to target sectors where climate action would be most effective. Take agriculture. While the Industrial Agriculture talking heads like to spout off about “growing more with less” and “getting cleaner,” EPA data helps us to cut through the crap. Agriculture GHG emissions go up and down, but the trend since 1990 has been an increase in sector-wide climate pollution:
The EPA report documents the largest agriculture climate polluters: overapplication of fertilizer, enteric fermentation (primarily cow burps and farts), and manure pollution primarily from industrial beef, dairy cattle, and hog operations (these concentrated factory farms “manage manure” by washing feces into giant manure ponds that emit large volumes of GHGs).
The EPA attributes a large chunk of growing climate pollution since 1990 to the growing number of dairy and hog factory farms:
Without this critical EPA reporting, critics of highly polluting industries like Industrial Agriculture will be subject to even more industry spin, greenwashing, misinformation, and marketing claims that hide the truth. That’s one more problem created by an Administration that appears dead-set on supporting corporations, facilitating more pollution, and rewarding extractive industries that have been damaging rural America for far too long.
The Cocklebur covers rural policy and politics from a progressive point-of-view. Our work focuses on a tangled rural political reality of dishonest debate, economic and racial disparities, corporate power over our democracy, and disinformation peddled by conservative media outlets. We aim to use facts, data, and science to inform our point-of-view. We wear our complicated love/WTF relationship with rural America on our sleeve.
