We have all suffered the consequences of the far-left environmental lobby’s efforts to implement their so-called “green new deal,” by cracking down on functional refrigerators, banning our gas stoves, reducing the pressure of our showerheads, dimming our lights and shoving us into “15-minute cities.”
President Trump has fortunately been willing to push back, defending Americans fed up with the constant drumbeat of forced scarcity and dysfunction, and instead implementing an agenda based upon consumer choice, appliances that actually work as intended, and ensuring our diesel equipment and vehicles are operational when needed.
On Friday, the Trump EPA took action to eliminate yet another dystopian requirement of what is more accurately described as the “green new scam”: Diesel Exhaust Fluid (DEF) system failures.
This relic of Obama-era environmentalism mandated diesel equipment — including semi-trucks, farm equipment, pickups, cars, and tow-trucks — be automatically slowed or shut down based on an adequate supply of this required mix.
Once a driver runs out of DEF or, as has been so common with the introduction of this not-ready-for-primetime technology, faces a mechanical failure preventing injection of it into the exhaust system, his vehicle either shuts down or is dramatically reduced to a painful crawl, making ongoing operation almost impossible, regardless of the situation.
The horror stories about being stranded in a field, on a busy highway, in the middle of the night while driving home, while towing an inoperable 18-wheeler, etc., have been legion.
Diesel-operated machines have been susceptible to sudden shutdowns or “deratement” since 2010, when the Obama EPA began requiring DEF be used to reduce emissions.
Compulsory sensors installed to implement enforcement have since left countless truckers on the side of the road and ranchers stuck in pastures over the last 15 years.
The cost of operating DEF-requiring vehicles has skyrocketed, with repairs soaring into tens-of-thousands of dollars once a system fails.
To put it bluntly: no one should find themselves stranded in 100-degree heat because of bad decisions made in Washington D.C., yet that is exactly what has happened with this wrong-headed move.
Radical restrictions to shut down diesel engines are the kind of nuisance regulations that infuriate ordinary Americans, increase operating costs and, ultimately, do nothing to improve the environment.
In fact, if one were to add up the number of plastic DEF jugs (manufactured using petroleum products) filling up our landfills and strewn along highways, we would most likely find that it has provided no net benefit whatsoever.
One of the very first issues that I (and many others) brought to EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin’s attention early in the Trump term was the problems with the DEF requirement.
I am pleased to report that those discussions have resulted in real relief for Americans, with the EPA making several changes to alleviate the pain that has been inflicted by an overbearing bureaucracy.
For example, Administrator Zeldin issued guidance last August requesting manufacturers revise DEF system software to stop sudden shutdowns.
The guidance was followed by additional measures in February collecting industry data on DEF system failures. The Trump EPA is now moving to further alleviate the impact of this mandate by issuing the most recent guidance to remove the sensor requirement entirely.
Recent decades, however, have exposed the ping-pong effect of successive administrations simply reversing the executive or administrative actions of their predecessors, thereby keeping the regulated community in a state of uncertainty and instability.
It is for this reason that Congress must also exercise its Article 1 authority to terminate these wrong-headed DEF mandates.
That’s why I co-sponsored the House companion bill to Sen. Cynthia Lummis’s Diesel Truck Liberation Act.
This common-sense legislation takes EPA’s actions further to address long-standing public frustrations.
Our proposal prohibits federal agencies from compelling manufacturers to install or maintain control devices that threaten to shut down or otherwise compromise diesel equipment while in operation.
The safety and viability of our trucking, agriculture, towing, and manufacturing industries who rely on diesel-powered equipment are simply too important for Congress not to act.
The Trump EPA is ushering in a golden age of real environmentalism, while providing hard-working Americans immediate relief from far-left dogmatism and ineffective virtue signaling.
The latest action will save farmers, truckers, and others more than $13 billion annually, thereby benefiting the entire economy.
The days of Washington bureaucrats imposing costly mandates on the men and women who keep America running are ending.
But the job is far from finished. Now is the time for Congress to work at “Trump speed” to codify the President’s environmental sanity as part of the America First legacy.
Harriet Hageman represents the State of Wyoming in the U.S. House of Representatives
