As discussed in a couple of recent posts here and here, the so-called CO2 Endangerment Finding (EF) was an EPA regulatory action early in the Obama Administration (December 2009) that now provides the foundation for all government efforts to restrict and suppress the use of hydrocarbons in our economy. [emphasis, links added]
In one of his first-day Executive Orders (“Unleashing American Energy”), President Trump directed the incoming EPA Administrator to submit, within 30 days, “recommendations to the Director of OMB on the legality and continuing applicability of the Administrator’s findings.”
Lee Zeldin was then confirmed and sworn in as EPA Administrator on January 29; but the 30th day after the EO, February 19, passed without any public news about a recommendation on the EF.
Today there is news.
Apparently, The Washington Post was the first outlet to break the story; but that piece is behind their paywall, so I won’t link to it. [Archived version here]
Fortunately, multiple outlets not behind the paywall promptly posted slightly rewritten versions of the WaPo story. Here is a version from Politico, and here is a version from the Associated Press as it appeared in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
To no one’s surprise, the news is that Zeldin has recommended reconsideration of the EF. Apparently, the recommendation was made a few days ago in a private memorandum.
Here is the AP/AJC version:
In a potential landmark action, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency has privately urged the Trump administration to reconsider a scientific finding that has long been the central basis for U.S. action against climate change. In a report to the White House, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin called for a rewrite of the agency’s finding that determined planet-warming greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare.
If this was a private memorandum, how did the story turn up in The Washington Post and other outlets? The answer is, of course, anonymous leaks.
The AP/AJC article says there were “four people who were briefed on the matter but spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.”
No surprise there — I would expect that 90% or more of the holdover staff at EPA are hostile to the new administration and happy to do whatever they can to undermine it.
But note this from a little further down in the same story:
Trump, at a Cabinet meeting Wednesday, said Zeldin told him he is moving to eliminate about 65% of the EPA’s workforce. “A lot of people that weren’t doing their job, they were just obstructionist,” Trump said.
Trump’s EPA Administrators should have done that in his first four-year term. But it’s never too late.
Perhaps most notable about the news stories is the haughty and dismissive reaction of the usual suspects on the left.
For example, Politico gets quotes from David Doniger of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and Vickie Patton of the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF):
“This decision ignores science and the law,” David Doniger, senior strategist and attorney for climate and energy at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said in a statement. “Abdicating EPA’s clear legal duty to curb climate-changing pollution only makes sense if you consider who would benefit: the oil, coal, and gas magnates who handed the president millions of dollars in campaign contributions.” …
Vickie Patton, the Environmental Defense Fund’s general counsel, said any move to undo the finding “would be reckless, unlawful, and ignore EPA’s fundamental responsibility to protect Americans from destructive climate pollution. We will vigorously oppose it.”
Environmental groups and Democrat-led states will do everything they can to oppose the roll-back of the EF, and they have essentially infinite funds to litigate. So will the rescission be a difficult thing to do, and/or likely to fail in court?
Much of the discussion in the two linked pieces and in others I have read, dwells on the heavy lift necessary to undo a regulation that has gone through the “notice and comment” rulemaking process.
For example, a Bloomberg piece here (behind paywall) presents the rescission of the EF as an enormous challenge:
It could take years for the EPA to go through a required rulemaking process to unwind the endangerment finding, and even then, it might not survive inevitable legal challenges.
They’re trying to scare the administration off, but I don’t think they are right, or that it will work. First, the idea that the rulemaking process will “take years” is ridiculous. Yes, it is a cumbersome process.
But the Obama people took office on January 20, 2009, went through the full rulemaking process, and published the EF in final form on December 15, 2009 — less than 11 months later. I don’t know any reason why the Trump people can’t meet the same schedule, or even improve on it by a few months.
Second, the scientific papers to use to support the rescission are all easily at hand. A couple of junior people with access to the internet and Google can easily come up with several hundred papers published since 2009 supporting the no-danger position.
As I laid out in my January 26 post, the most important are papers showing no increasing trends in severe weather events (hurricanes, tornadoes, droughts, floods, wildfires, etc.). There are very many of these.
Lacking any convincing evidence of increases in severe weather, the enviros are left with only a claim that gradual warming over the next century will be some kind of big problem.
But EPA can respond that the costs and risks of a forced energy transition to an untested system pose far, far greater dangers to human health and welfare: blackouts in the dead of winter when all heat is mandated to be electric; massive fires at huge grid-scale battery installations used to back up wind and solar electricity; toxic gases from such fires imperiling large urban populations; leaks and explosions impacting hydrogen infrastructure; electric cars and buses running out of charge on freezing-cold days and stranding the occupants; and so on and on.
How about the risk of large numbers of people losing access to electricity or home heat or automobile transportation because they can’t afford the cost?
The point of all these things is that they are not a question of the “science” of global warming. They are a question of making a judgment call trading off one set of dangers and risks against another.
No amount of appeals to the authority of “scientists” preaching global warming alarm can even address the question of the risks from the forced adoption of unproven new energy technologies.
So get to work, EPA! I want to see the EF gone by Thanksgiving. Then we’ll have something to be thankful for.
Read more at Manhattan Contrarian
