President Trump is set to push the remaining Democrats who have even a modicum of sanity left right off the crazy cliff.
The Wall Street Journal notes:
The reversal targets the 2009 “endangerment finding,” which concluded that six greenhouse gases pose a threat to public health and welfare. The finding provided the legal underpinning for the Environmental Protection Agency’s climate rules, which limited emissions from power plants and tightened fuel-economy standards for vehicles under the Clean Air Act…
The final rule, set to be made public later this week, removes the regulatory requirements to measure, report, certify and comply with federal greenhouse-gas emission standards for motor vehicles, and repeals associated compliance programs, credit provisions and reporting obligations for industries, according to administration officials.
Per Dr. Matthew M. Wielicki, an earth science professor and climate expert:
The evidence is now in… and it confirms what many of us have been saying for years.
The Obama EPA’s 2009 Endangerment Finding was pre-cooked.
According to newly highlighted Government Accountability & Oversight (GAO) documentation, EPA political appointees were calling the Endangerment Finding a “decision ready to go” and a “basic fact” before any real deliberation or public process had taken place. Internal emails show the discussion wasn’t whether greenhouse gases endangered public welfare (which they don’t)… it was how fast they could push it through to meet political timelines tied to Copenhagen and the UN.
That’s not science.
That’s not rulemaking.
That’s predetermination.
And it matters, because the Endangerment Finding became the legal foundation for everything that followed: power-plant rules, vehicle standards, energy restrictions, and trillions of dollars in downstream economic consequences.
“This amounts to the largest act of deregulation in the history of the United States,” EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin added in an interview.
Although this decision does not directly impact emissions standards for power plants or oil and gas facilities, it is expected to influence vehicle emissions standards. Additionally, it may pave the way for the Trump administration to pursue broader efforts to roll back environmental regulations.
“Repealing the Endangerment Finding is an essential step toward restoring sanity to federal energy and vehicle policy. Implemented by Obama-era bureaucrats, it has been used for years to justify costly and needless mandates that have driven up the price of cars and trucks,” Jason Isaac, the CEO of the American Energy Institute, said. “Ending it dismantles the legal backbone of those mandates, delivers relief to consumers, and opens the door to rolling back similar regulatory overreach across the energy sector. This action restores the Clean Air Act to its intended purpose, reins in agency power the Supreme Court has already warned against, and returns major policy decisions to the people’s elected representatives.”
Environmental groups are expected to challenge the move in court, of course, because left-wing Democratic presidents are allowed to impose economy-killing rules without any basis in fact or reality, but economy-growing Republican presidents aren’t allowed to repeal them.
“More energy drives human flourishing,” Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said. “Energy abundance is the thing that we have to focus on, not regulating certain forms of energy out.”
“President Trump continues to deliver for the American people,” James Taylor, the President of the Heartland Institute, added. “The Obama administration’s Endangerment Finding was a wrong-headed, politicized determination that defied science and stifled the American people. CO2 is the gift of life for planet Earth, not a pollutant or a threat to public health and welfare.”
“Rescinding the endangerment finding is great, but it’s not the ballgame. Not only does the rescission have to stand up in court, it must result in the overturning of the 2007 Supreme Court decision in Massachusetts v. EPA, where the Court wrongly ruled that EPA could regulate greenhouse gases even though Congress did not expressly authorize it,” Miloy said.
“The 2022 SCOTUS decision in West Virginia v. EPA held that EPA must have express congressional authorization for major regulatory programs. So, endangerment finding litigation must result in West Virginia v. EPA trumping Massachusetts v. EPA. Even if the Trump EPA wins in court with respect to rescinding the endangerment finding, without also overturning Massachusetts v. EPA, the next Democrat-run EPA will simply re-issue the endangerment finding, and all the Trump EPA’s great work will have been erased,” he added.