In what he called the “most consequential day of deregulation in American history,” the head of the Environmental Protection Agency announced a series of actions Wednesday to roll back landmark environmental regulations, including rules on pollution from coal-fired power plants, climate change and electric vehicles.
“We are driving a dagger through the heart of climate-change religion and ushering in America’s Golden Age,'' EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said in an essay in The Wall Street Journal.
His actions will eliminate trillions of dollars in regulatory costs and “hidden taxes,” Zeldin said, lowering the cost of living for American families and reducing prices for such essentials such as buying a car, heating your home and operating a business.
“Our actions will also reignite American manufacturing, spreading economic benefits to communities," Zeldin wrote.
In all, Zeldin said he is rolling back 31 environmental rules, including a scientific finding that has long been the central basis for U.S. action against climate change.
Zeldin said he and President Donald Trump support rewriting the agency’s 2009 finding that planet-warming greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare. The Obama-era determination under the Clean Air Act is the legal underpinning of a host of climate regulations for motor vehicles, power plants and other pollution sources.
Environmentalists and climate scientists call the endangerment finding a bedrock of U.S. law and say any attempt to undo it will have little chance of success.
“In the face of overwhelming science, it’s impossible to think that the EPA could develop a contradictory finding that would stand up in court," said David Doniger, a climate expert at the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group.
In a related action, Zeldin said EPA will rewrite a rule restricting air pollution from fossil-fueled fired power plants and a separate measure restricting emissions from cars and trucks. Zeldin and the Republican president incorrectly label the car rule as an electric vehicle "mandate.''
President Joe Biden's Democratic administration had said the power plant rules would reduce pollution and improve public health while supporting the reliable, long-term supply of electricity that America needs.
The EPA also will take aim at rules restricting industrial pollution of mercury and other air toxins, as well as separate rules on soot pollution and federal protections for significant areas of wetlands.
“This isn’t about abandoning environmental protection — it’s about achieving it through innovation and not strangulation,” Zeldin wrote. “By reconsidering rules that throttled oil and gas production and unfairly targeted coal-fired power plants, we are ensuring that American energy remains clean, affordable, and reliable.”
University of Pennsylvania climate scientist Michael Mann called the EPA’s action “just the latest form of Republican climate denial. They can no longer deny climate change is happening, so instead they’re pretending it’s not a threat, despite the overwhelming scientific evidence that it is, perhaps, the greatest threat that we face today.”
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virusrex
This is terrible even if it was the only thing that is being deregulated, but unfortunately for the American public this is just one of many things that are being stripped free of regulation, from food to medicines. When this is viewed as a way to benefit rich companies so they can avoid taking any responsibility and just pass the damage to the population at large it makes sense, still horrible but exactly what would be expected from people that only value money and give no importance to what happens to people at large.
theFu
Trump won't be happy until the USA has air pollution as bad as China does every day.
We need laws that mandate every company harming the environment pre-pay for cleanup, with the estimated costs of the clean up set by multiple, independent, cleanup companies. Ideally, companies should prevent any leaks and clean as they go. That is for ground water, runoff, air pollution and to create environmentally pristine places near any spills.
That's the roll of Govt.
Trump is claiming he's good for business. 35 days of wealth destruction is all I see. Our investments are all down since Trump took office.
Trump will be gone in 1409 days, if not sooner.
Desert Tortoise
What the Repubes can't seem to understand is that pollution itself is a cost of production. It is a cost just like raw materials, labor, energy, land and overhead. But unlike these other costs it is not incorporated into the price of the product. Instead it is a cost born by others, by those who have to suffer the negative consequences of the pollution. In that way, economically, pollution is much like a subsidy with those who suffer the polluted air and water basically paying part of the cost of production for the polluting firms. As a result, just as with a subsidy, the firms produce more than is economically efficient at a below market price.
If firms had to pay the full cost of the pollution they impose on others they would have to raise their prices and produce less. But in the process there would be less pollution imposed on others and conceivably they could be compensated for the pollution they live with. Pollution is known by economists as a "Negative Externality" and there is a rich literature on the subject.