Slashing EPA Regulations
Donald Trump and EPA chief Lee Zeldin are working hard to fight the “Green New Scam.”
At various points in the past, President Donald Trump has called climate change a “hoax” and a “scam.” His objective in saying that is to trigger the ecofascist members of the climate cult, not to make literal statements about the science of the earth’s temperatures. Is the climate changing? Sure. Trump just sees through the Democrats’ scheme to swindle taxpayers and empower totalitarian government. That’s the hoax and scam.
The Green New Deal is an all-encompassing vision of punitive taxation and income redistribution to so-called green energy. It’s government control of most facets of life because we supposedly face an emergency caused by man-made climate change. The reality is that it’s a bankrupting boondoggle that will have a negligible effect on the planet.
That’s why Trump signed an executive order titled “Unleashing American Energy” on his first day in office. The outflow of Trump’s order is EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin’s announcement of a plan to wake up from the Left’s green nightmare.
In a Wall Street Journal op-ed titled, “EPA Ends the ‘Green New Deal,’” Zeldin wrote yesterday about significant changes coming to the Environmental Protection Agency. He called the 31 actions “the most consequential day of deregulation in American history.”
By overhauling massive rules on the endangerment finding, the social cost of carbon and similar issues, we are driving a dagger through the heart of climate-change religion and ushering in America’s Golden Age. These actions will roll back trillions of dollars in regulatory costs and hidden taxes. As a result, the cost of living for American families will decrease, and essentials such as buying a car, heating your home and operating a business will become more affordable. Our actions will also reignite American manufacturing, spreading economic benefits to communities.
What is the “endangerment finding”? It’s a Barack Obama-era EPA rule declaring that greenhouse gases are pollutants, which, lo and behold, gave carte blanche to regulate all sorts of emissions sources in the name of saving the planet. Technically, the justification for that finding predates Obama, dating back to the 2007 Supreme Court decision Mass v. EPA. The Court ruled that the Clean Air Act of 1963 says the EPA must regulate any emissions that “cause, or contribute to, air pollution which may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare.” The conclusion was that greenhouse gases fit that bill.
The Obama and, even more so, Joe Biden administrations strained that ruling and law to regulate carbon dioxide emissions in everything from tailpipes to coal plants. Despite the insistence of the climate cultists, the science is dubious. There’s obviously disagreement about that, but “Congress never authorized the EPA to regulate CO2 emissions,” argue the editors of The Wall Street Journal. “Democrats have tried and failed several times when they had a majority.”
Perhaps that ambiguity is precisely what Team Trump is banking on to combat the inevitable legal challenge. Unfortunately, though law professor Jonathan Adler agrees with Trump and Zeldin on the policy, he expects Trump will lose on the law.
Again, the ecofascist Left’s objective is ever-expanding power. Another example of this is how Obama and Biden infamously expanded the scope of regulation under the Clean Water Act of 1972. The Washington Post acknowledged that Biden’s expansion of “waters of the United States” covered everything “from pollutants including livestock waste, construction runoff, and industrial effluent.” Leftists then ridiculously tarred opponents as not wanting clean water.
“It’s not every mud puddle that they should regulate,” quipped California Republican Representative Doug LaMalfa. “If you can float a rubber duck in it for a half-hour after the rain, that does not mean this is something they can regulate.”
Zeldin agrees, retracting those regulations as part of his announcement. Last year, the Supreme Court also agreed, ruling that the EPA’s authority “extends to only those wetlands with a continuous surface connection to bodies that are ‘waters of the United States’ in their own right.”
Ecofascists complain about Trump’s supposedly pollution-friendly posture, and they’ll sue, of course, effectively arguing that the government can’t not be tyrannical. Yet, to put it mildly, getting the government out of every exhale and puddle will be a welcome change. As Zeldin put it, “Today marks the death of the Green New Scam.”
That’s a new deal worth making.
