California regulators announced a plan Tuesday to enforce the state’s fuel efficiency standards after the Trump administration moved to weaken them, the Los Angeles Times reports.
According to the Times, the California Air Resources Board proposal would require automakers to comply with the state’s more stringent greenhouse gas emissions rules despite the rollbacks proposed last week by the Environmental Protection Agency.
The Trump administration has threatened to remove California’s waiver—a major weapon in the fight against climate change—prompting the state to retaliate with legal threats. This new proposal would mean that automakers must produce more efficient cars and trucks in California and the 13 other states that follow its lead, while the rest of the county heeds the EPA’s new order: halting Obama-era targets to minimize pollution at the level of about 30 miles per gallon.
State Air Resources Board Chair Mary Nichols said in a statement last week that regulators are scrutinizing the EPA’s “absurd conclusion that weakening standards to allow dirtier, less efficient vehicles will actually save lives and money.”
