Environmental Defense Fund

And today I'm honored to welcome my guest, Dr. Maria Doa.

She is the Senior Director of Chemicals Policy at the Environmental Defense Fund, where her primary focus is on reducing exposures to toxic chemicals through health protective implementation of the Toxic Substances Control Act.

Dr. Doha joined the Environmental Defense Fund in 2021 after a 30-year career at the Environmental Protection Agency, where she developed extensive experience in chemical safety, risk policy, and risk management of chemicals.

At the EPA, she created and led programs to reduce risks to many industrial and commercial chemicals, including lead, PCBs, mercury, and asbestos, and to increase the public's access to information on toxic chemicals.

She holds a doctorate in organic chemistry from the University of Pittsburgh and a bachelor of science in chemistry from the University of Michigan.

less regulation, less protection of people, and really putting profits ahead of health.

It's such a shame.

So after your work at the EPA, your career really, you joined the Environmental Defense Fund.

We're all gonna die one day.

[laughs] Cheeseburger." Um, so pushing back on that, there is a, uh, press release from the Center for Biological Diversity, a bunch of environmental groups and people like the Sierra Club, Environmental Defense Fund, Public Citizen, uh, that are suing the administration back.

And I'm gonna quote from their release saying, "The existing fuel economy standards would've saved 64 billion gallons of gas.

Even before the current rise in prices, they were set to deliver $35 billion in savings to consumers over the lifetimes of the vehicles cov- covered.

President Donald Trump's administration is being sued over his plan to slash federal fuel economy standards for U.S. cars.

Environmental groups such as the Sierra Club, Environmental Defense Fund, and the Center for Biological Diversity said in an October 2nd news release that they have filed a lawsuit that asks a U.S. court to intervene to stop the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration from lowering the required fleet-wide average fuel economy for cars.

The Trump administration's proposal would take the current requirement of more than 50 miles per gallon by 2031 down to just under 35 miles per gallon.

The groups said NHTSA ignored its own analysis showing the weaker fuel rules will result in drivers paying more at the pump.

Lessons from the congestion pricing fight.

After fighting for congestion pricing and pushing back on the negative narrative, Joe Leishman of the Environmental Defense Fund shares strategies for other advocates considering pushing for the program in their cities.

The key, keys are making sure to collect and report the data to counteract skepticism, building a broad coalition of advocates young and old, and sustaining the organizing, the organizing through the initial implementation when the lawsuits and opposition pushes back hard.

This is by Joe Leishman in the Environmental Defense Fund.

I talked about this too in my discussion is we really do have an advoca- advocacy, um, bump that, um, you know, needs to be addressed.

We learned a lot from this actually movement for congestion pricing and what, what matters.

I just feel so 2019.

It was through the Environmental Defense Fund with their marketing brochure.

I had no idea.

Look, it doesn't matter when you learned about native plants.

And this, I think, is going to help automakers, but environmental groups such as Sierra Club are filing a lawsuit.

Environmental Defense Fund and the Center for Biological Diversity are all joining in on a lawsuit.

Your thoughts?

I'm going to maybe just disagree with you a little bit here.

Um, spent, uh, seven years teaching economics at the School of Management at Yale, so I was a kind of business school environmental professor, uh, environmental strategy professor, and I basically, n- just when I got promoted, uh, I decided to leave academia because I wanted to get more involved in the policy debates.

And so I went to the Environmental Defense Fund, where I had actually been just out of college before grad school.

This was right in the midst of the climate legislation battles in the US Congress.

I built kind of the economic and policy analysis, uh, shop at EDF.