The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is about to pull the rug from underneath climate regulation…
The EPA, under Lee Zeldin, plans to revoke the 2009 “endangerment finding”, an Obama-era determination that six greenhouse gases “threaten the public health and welfare of current and future generations” and that has anchored federal climate regulation under the Clean Air Act, according to a new Wall Street Journal report.
Bloomberg reported that the repeal could be announced as soon as Wednesday, citing an unnamed source.
Repealing the Obama-era climate finding would strip away the legal foundation for federal greenhouse gas regulation, which has been nothing more than toxic and degrowth for the economy, while China and India expanded coal-fired generation to power manufacturing hubs.
“This amounts to the largest act of deregulation in the history of the United States,” EPA head Zeldin said in an interview.
Officials say it does not directly apply to emissions rules for oil-and-gas power plants and other stationary sources, but repealing the finding could make it easier to challenge or roll back those regulations at a later date.
The rollback would be a major win for the economy, which has been burdened by years of Democrats’ “climate crisis” policies, which have epically backfired as electricity rates have soared amid terrible bets on unreliable solar and wind generation and the retirement of fossil-fuel plants.
This has all collided with grid strain in the data center era, triggering a power bill crisis across Maryland and other Mid-Atlantic states.
Also, this brutally cold winter has only underscored one very important point for ‘team fossil fuels’: coal and natural gas have helped keep the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast power grids from collapsing in recent weeks.
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Since taking office, President Trump has pursued deregulation and pushed for reliable fossil fuels, telling supporters during the campaign trail, “drill, baby, drill.” The goal, the president has stated over and over, is to reverse the worst inflation storm in a generation, which he blames on Democrats and their nation-killing green agenda.
On President Trump’s first day of office last year, he signed an executive order directing the EPA to submit an assessment on the endangerment finding. Then by July, he received the proposal to rescind the finding.
Now, the rollback that would equal upwards of $1 trillion in cuts is set to be announced this week, along with several other energy- and climate-related announcements that will help drive down the cost of living.
“More energy drives human flourishing,” Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said in an interview. “Energy abundance is the thing that we have to focus on, not regulating certain forms of energy out.”
The U.S. economy has spent two decades under “climate crisis” regulations, and it has backfired spectacularly. Time to get back to basics.
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