EPA Administrator Wants To Destroy “Climate Change Religion” – CleanTechnica

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2+2 = 4, except in the world of Trumpillkillthings, in which common sense and science are viewed as the vicious products of a “woke mind virus.” Recently, Lee Zeldin, the whack job appointed to serve as EPA administrator, has made it his mission to undo a 2009 EPA finding that greenhouse gases endanger public health — a finding that forms the basis for most federal climate regulations. Repealing it would eliminate the EPA’s legal authority to regulate carbon pollution from power plants, vehicles, oil and gas infrastructure, and other sources.

The move is part of the 31-point plan Zeldin and the EPA announced in March which they brag is the “biggest deregulatory action in US history.” The impetus for the plan, supposedly, is to lower the cost of living for hard working Americans who have been burdened for too long by rules designed to reduce the amount of mercury pollution created by coal-fired generating plants or the amount of fine particulates they spew into the air.

The plan is nothing short of a Christmas present to the fossil fuel companies which contributed so lavishly to the Trump campaign in 2024. All their jock-sniffing trips to Mar-A-Loco have now paid off handsomely with the administration’s total capitulation to their wish list. Among other things, the EPA plan will hobble the renewable energy industry, which commits the unpardonable sin of producing electricity without creating greenhouse gas emissions. The fossil fuel crowd cannot compete with that, so they bought the government and are now reaping the rewards.

Zeldin said when the new plan was announced, “Today is the greatest day of deregulation our nation has seen. We are driving a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion to drive down cost of living for American families, unleash American energy, bring auto jobs back to the U.S. and more. Alongside President Trump, we are living up to our promises to unleash American energy, lower costs for Americans, revitalize the American auto industry, and work hand-in-hand with our state partners to advance our shared mission.”

You probably haven’t heard much about the details of the plan unless you watch Faux News, so as a service to our readers, here is a list of the wondrous things the EPA has in mind:

• Reconsideration of regulations on power plants
• Reconsideration of regulations throttling the oil and gas industry
• Reconsideration of Mercury and Air Toxics Standards that improperly targeted coal-fired power plants
• Reconsideration of mandatory Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program that imposed significant costs on the American energy supply
• Reconsideration of limitations, guidelines and standards for the Steam Electric Power Generating Industry to ensure low-cost electricity while protecting water resources
• Reconsideration of wastewater regulations for oil and gas development to help unleash American energy
• Reconsideration of Biden-Harris Administration Risk Management Program rule that made America’s oil and natural gas refineries and chemical facilities less safe

I especially like relaxing wastewater regulations on fracking. Making America great apparently means tuning it into a 3,119,884.69 square mile toxic waste dump. But wait, there’s more! Here is the list of items the EPA says will lower cost of living for Americans:

• Reconsideration of light-duty, medium-duty, and heavy-duty vehicle regulations that provided the foundation for the Biden-Harris electric vehicle mandate
• Reconsideration of the 2009 Endangerment Finding and regulations and actions that rely on that Finding
• Reconsideration of technology transition rule that forces companies to use certain technologies that increased costs on food at grocery stores and semiconductor manufacturing
• Reconsideration of Particulate Matter National Ambient Air Quality Standards that shut down opportunities for American manufacturing and small businesses
• Reconsideration of multiple National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants for American energy and manufacturing sectors
• Restructuring the Regional Haze Program that threatened the supply of affordable energy for American families
• Redirecting enforcement resources to EPA’s core mission to relieve the economy of unnecessary bureaucratic burdens that drive up costs for American consumers
• Terminating Biden’s Environmental Justice and DEI arms of the agency

That is some really swell stuff. We need more fine particulates in our lungs when we breathe and everybody knows black and brown people and women are just taking jobs away from entitled white dudes.

Madness At The EPA

The Times has seen a draft of theEPA proposal that has been submitted to the White House. It would eliminate all limits on greenhouse gases from coal- and methane-fired generating stations in the United States. Why would anybody do anything that stupid? Because the current failed administration is owned lock, stock, and barrel by the fossil fuel industry. They paid to get these bozos elected and now they are ready to reap the benefits.

Don’t get your knickers in a knot, people. Yeah, a billion dollars or so is a lot of money, but if it results in a hundred billion dollar payday, that’s a return on investment that any prudent  business leader would be proud of, right? It’s not graft, it’s just business. Don Corleone would understand.

The EPA proposal argues that carbon dioxide and other emissions from power plants that burn fossil fuels “do not contribute significantly to dangerous pollution” or climate change because they are a.) relatively small and b.) they are less than they were in the US a decade ago. Of course, they are less because of the rise of renewable energy and because of the emissions regulations the agency wants to eliminate.

And yet, “Fossil fuel power plants are the single largest industrial source of climate destabilizing carbon dioxide in the United States, and emit pollution levels that exceed the vast majority of countries in the world,” Vickie Patton, general counsel for the Environmental Defense Fund, told the New York Times. She said the proposal is “an abuse of the EPA’s responsibility under the law. It flies in the face of common sense and puts millions of people in harm’s way to say the single largest industrial source of carbon dioxide in the United States is not significant.”

To justify its action, the EPA says US emissions from the power sector were only about 3% of global greenhouse gas emissions in 2022. Since that is less than the 5.5% they were in 2005, that means they are de minimums and can be safely ignored. Restricting power sector emissions further would not “meaningfully” improve public health, the agency argues. Yet in the US, thermal generating stations emitted about 1.5 billion metric tons of emissions in 2023 — more than the total greenhouse gas emissions produced by most countries. If that sounds significant to you, you’re not alone.

Jeffrey Holmstead is an attorney who served in the EPA during both Bush administrations and now represents utility companies. He told the Times he thinks the EPA’s position that power plant emissions are too small to be concerned about makes sense. But he wonders if it will survive a legal challenge. “I just don’t know if you’re contributing 3 percent of greenhouse gas emissions the court will say ‘that’s not significant’ when there’s hardly anybody that contributes more than that.”

The Process Begins

The alleged president thinks he should be able to do whatever he wants with the stroke of a pen, but before the EPA proposal can go into effect, first it needs to be blessed by the policy apparatchiks within the administration. Then it must go through a mandatory public comment period. Legal challenges from environmental groups are sure to follow, and those challenges will surely wind up before the US Supreme Court,, where anything can happen and usually does.

If the policy survives all those challenges and goes into effect, it could block future administrations from regulating carbon dioxide emissions from power plants and make it easier to unravel other climate regulations, some experts believe. “If the administration is going to do this, it is the strategically smartest way,” Jonathan Adler, a conservative law professor at Case Western University told the New York Times. “If they’re successful with regard to power plants, they’re pretty much going to be successful with everything else.”

Breathe Deep

This proposal is all about untaxed externalities. Coal, oil, and methane producers believe in their heart of hearts that they should not have to pay to clean up the messes they make when they torture the Earth to extract their products. That is one of the reasons why these corporations have been profitable for so long. They rail about incentives for renewable energy but seem oblivious to the fact that they receive more than $5 trillion a year in direct and indirect subsidies, according to the International Monetary Fund.

Much of the effort to prevent these changes will take place in high stakes court battles, but there is one thing ordinary people can do. They can tell their elected representatives they do not want more smog, more mercury, more oxides of nitrogen, more carbon dioxide, more methane, and more polluted groundwater by voting these climate destroyers out of office. In the final analysis, it is not up to the fossil fuel industry, it is up to us.