Guest essay by Jay Lehr
At the Republican National Convention last summer, the GOP approved a platform that stated: “We propose to shift responsibility for environmental regulation from the federal bureaucracy to the states and to transform the EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] into an independent bipartisan commission, similar to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, with structural safeguards against politicized science.” It also says “We will likewise forbid the EPA to regulate carbon dioxide, something never envisioned when Congress passed the Clean Air Act.”
The GOP followed the lead of President Donald Trump, who in a March debate said he would abolish EPA, and in a May speech in North Dakota condemned “the Environmental Protection Agency’s use of totalitarian tactics” that has “denied millions of Americans access to the energy wealth sitting under our feet. This is your treasure, and you – the American People – are entitled to share in the riches.”
Trump and the GOP are saying, finally, what millions of people have been thinking for a long time: EPA has become the cause of, not the solution to, the nation’s major environmental problems. It’s time to end EPA.
A Promising Beginning
In the late 1960s, the United States faced real problems regarding the quality of its air and water, waste disposal, and contamination from mining and agriculture. Pollution crossed borders – the borders between private property as well as between cities, states, and nations – and traditional remedies based on private property rights didn’t seem to be working. The public was overly complacent about the possible threat to their safety.
Many scientists, myself included, lobbied the federal government to form a cabinet-level agency to address these problems. [1] In 1971, EPA was born. During the agency’s first 10 years, Congress passed seven legislative acts to protect the environment, including the Water Pollution Control Act (later renamed the Clean Water Act), Safe Drinking Water Act, Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, and the Clean Air Act.
At first, these laws worked well, protecting the environment and the health of our citizens. Problems were identified, measured, exposed, and major investments were made to reduce dangerous emissions and protect the public from exposure to them. EPA and other government agencies regularly report the subsequent dramatic reduction in all the pollutants we originally targeted. By the 1980s, nothing more needed to be done beyond monitoring our continuing success in cleaning up the environment. It was time to declare victory and go home.
EPA Is Now an Obstacle
Beginning around 1981, however, radical Leftists realized they could advance their political agenda by taking over the environmental movement and use it to advocate for ever-more draconian regulations on businesses. Environmentalists allowed this take-over to occur because it brought massive funding from liberal foundations, political power, and prestige. [2]
Politicians realized they could win votes by pandering to the environmental movement, repeating their pseudo-scientific claims, and posing as protectors of nature and the public health. The wind, solar, and ethanol industries saw they could use regulations to handicap competitors or help themselves to public subsidies.
Today, EPA is a captive of activist and special-interest groups. Its regulations have nothing to do with protecting the environment. Its rules account for nearly half of the $2 trillion annual cost of complying with all national regulations in the United States.
In 2008, The Heritage Foundation estimated the costs of EPA’s first proposal to regulate greenhouse gases in the name of fighting global warming were “close to $7 trillion and three million manufacturing jobs lost.” According to Heritage, “the sweep of regulations … could severely affect nearly every major energy-using product from cars to lawnmowers, and a million or more businesses and buildings of all types. And all of this sacrifice is in order to make, at best, a minuscule contribution to an overstated environmental threat.”
President Barack Obama has routinely used EPA to circumvent Congress to impose severe regulations on farmers, ranchers, other private landowners, fisheries, and the energy sector. Just last week, the agency rushed through approval of new fuel efficiency standards for automobiles more than a year ahead of schedule to thwart any attempts by the Trump administration to stop it. Courts and Congress have objected to and tried to limit EPA’s abuses, but without noticeable success. Once a genuine success story, EPA has become the biggest obstacle to further environmental progress.
Replacing EPA
The solution is to return this authority to the states, replacing EPA with a Committee of the Whole of the 50 state environmental protection agencies.
State EPAs already have primary responsibility for the implementation of the nation’s environmental laws and EPA regulations. With more than 30 years of experience, these state agencies are ready to take over management of the nation’s environment.
Accountable to 50 governors and state legislatures, state EPAs are more attuned to real-world needs and trade-offs. Located in 50 state capitols, they are less vulnerable to the Left’s massive beltway lobbying machine.
The Committee would be made up of representatives from each state. EPA could be phased out over five years, which could include a one-year preparation period followed by a four-year program in which 25 percent of the agency’s activities would be passed to the Committee each year.
Seventy-five percent of EPA’s budget could be eliminated and most of the remainder would pay for national research labs. A small administrative structure would allow the states to refine existing environmental laws in a manner more suitable to protecting our environment without thwarting the development of our natural resources and energy supplies.
Benefits of Replacing EPA
The federal budget for environmental protection could be reduced from $8.6 billion to $2 billion or less. Staffing could be reduced from more than 15,000 to 300. The real savings, of course, would be in reduction of the $1 trillion in annual regulatory costs EPA imposes each year.
This reform would produce a second huge benefit by ending the government’s war on affordable energy. EPA is the principal funder and advocate of global warming alarmism, the myth that man-made climate change is a crisis. That movement would end on the day EPA’s doors shut, allowing Congress to return to taxpayers and consumers a “peace dividend” amount to some of the $4 billion a day currently spent world-wide on climate change.
Dismantling EPA is one part of a comprehensive set of reforms, many of them discussed by Trump and referred to in the GOP platform, to lighten the massive weight of government regulations on the American people. The nation needs a pro-energy, pro-environment, and pro-jobs agenda that recognizes the tremendous value of the natural resources under our feet.
While the rest of the world stumbles blindly in the grip of an anti-energy and anti-freedom ideology, the U.S. can march ahead and regain its place as the world’s economic and technological leader.
The nation’s environment is in terrific shape, thanks to early efforts by EPA and more recent efforts by state governments and businesses. The nation’s economy and environment will be even better if the federal government gets out of the way.
The EPA has long outlived its usefulness. Let’s return its powers to the states, where they belong.
Jay H. Lehr, Ph.D., jlehr@heartland.org, is science director of The Heartland Institute and editor of The Alternative Energy and Shale Gas Encyclopedia. (Wiley, 2016).
[1] See, for example, references in various footnotes to my testimony in 1973 on behalf of the Clean Water Act before the Subcommittee on the Environment of the Senate Committee on Commerce, 93d Cong., 1st Sess., (1973), here: Thomas J. Douglas, Safe Drinking Water Act of 1974 – History and Critique, 5 B.C. Envtl. Aff. L. Rev. 501 (1976),http://lawdigitalcommons.bc.edu/ealr/vol5/iss3/5 andhttp://lawdigitalcommons.bc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1892&context=ealr.
[2] This story is told in many books, including Green Rage: Radical Environmentalism and the Unmaking of Civilization by Christopher Manes (1990), Freezing in the Dark: Money, Power, Politics, and the Vast Left Wing Conspiracy by Ron Arnold, R. (2007), and In a Dark Wood: The Fight Over Forests and the Rising Tyranny of Ecology by Alston Chase (1995).
Conservationists have been hard at work since the late 1800s. Much of the early progress built on their efforts which had broad public support. What has happened since is not conservation. We know this and can muster the facts. Lets defund and debate.
“Defund and debate” … or just change what the letters stand for: = Environmental Politicizing Arena
Department of Education should go likewise. Leave authority and monitoring of federal antidiscrimination laws to the states.
Trump has said he will do just that. “Take it local.”
I can see where that’s going… creationist science teaching
@Griff January 26, 2017 at 6:42 am
So what?
They also need to amend the Wetlands Act before it shuts down farming, ranching, and single family housing development. They really should look at the rationale of managing public lands with three or more overlapping and politicized agencies and consider privatizing some BLM lands.
And revamp DOE back to its core mission with nukes and nuke waste.
What and cut in to their Bloated budget and expansionism?
Like practically every Federal agency, DOE continues to expand and grow in scope and nature – to insure more funding, more employees, more power, and more control.
And like the NRC, the entire budget, payroll, operating expenses, research contracts, etc of the NEW EPA should be paid on a very, very, small fee on all manufacturing, energy, and use of products. chemicals, processes that cause pollution. However, their must be scientific PROOF of the pollution, both cause and effect. To this day there is still no PROOF that CO2 is causing global warming greater than the noise level of the naturally occurring, non human caused, warming.
– Where is the Nobel Prize for the Scientific Proof. –
In the same period that man has been discussing AGW, they have discussed, and are on the verge of proving Black Holes, as Einstein predicted, exist. The level of skepticism is minimal on this fact. Yet all we have for AGW is a consensus. Scientific proof is not a democracy. It is not established by a vote. Even the UN IPCC reports use fuzzier and fuzzier terms for their prediction that the possibility that the probability that a smaller and smaller percent of the measured warming appears to be caused by human influence [ as long as you weight the data to exaggerate the effect caused by the urban heating effect and the use of sensors in areas exacerbated by human use. ] (Long sentence used to exaggerate the stupidity of the AGW Cult belief.) I am 75 years old, I can still remember riding to the airport to drop off my dad and seeing the Weather station equipment about 100 yards away from the building (no bigger than the local 7-11) and the small twin engine planes on the tarmac. Today that sam NWS station is in the same place surrounded by 100 acres of concrete, a three story building, jetliners idling their engines, and massive HVAC coolers within 100 yards. Please AGW Believers, explain to me how this has no effect? Please tell me how the temperature is now 10 degrees cooler at home, 15 miles away than it is on the weather report from this station? Explain how they justify using that temperature for proving AGW when the airport is just a dot on the map surrounded by farmland, like where my home is? The AGW theory has serious problems. .
Couldn’t agree more – the EPA was a good idea initially but has grown to become more of a problem than it was solving.
This one is a classic:
“with structural safeguards against politicized science.” It also says “We will likewise forbid the EPA to regulate carbon dioxide,”
So politicians who wish to avoid politicised science, wish to politically impose what science agencies can do. Can anyone spot the inconsistency here?
I am not sure that there is an inconsistency. The analogy that immediately springs to mind of course is the Amendment 1 of the US Constitution in which the authors make a political decision to ban an established religion , having seen in the history of Europe the disorder and civil war resulting from religion drawn into politics .
Because the decision to regulate CO2 was purely political, this is entirely consistent. The EPA violated it’s own rules when it made the endangerment finding. The US Congress has oversight authority over the EPA, and (hopefully) it will now exercise that authority.
Elections have consequences.
Of course they have consequences, and one of the consequences of this one is far more political interference with science. This was entirely predictable, but there is no point saying it is not happening.
Seaice,
You use the word “science” as if it were a person, a group, or a club of some sort. It is not. Science is a way of thinking and understanding the natural world around us. As such it is an idea and can’t be “interfered with” or destroyed. If you practice this thing called science correctly, then you are a scientist. No fancy degrees are necessary. And this may be a shock to you, but there is a lot of science done that is not government funded.
I love it when trolls admit that what they did was wrong, in this case politicizing science. However since reversing what they have done would be a political act, which would increase the total amount of politicization. Therefore whatever it is they did, must be left as is.
Come on Seaice!
The EPA was totally wrong to call CO2 a pollutant,a critical molecule that life needs more of than it it has now.
The EPA did that to gain regulatory power over it to beat up on industries it doesn’t like,it is the POLITICAL behavior that eventually caught up with them,the bigotry,the propaganda,the smothering regulations with a clear intent to destroy what they don’t approve of. The war on Coal was absurd in their regulatory overreach.
Don’t be this dumb anymore.
You need to look into exactly how the EPA “deemed” that CO2 was a “pollutant” and fit the definition of those pollutants that the laws passed by congress allowed them to control. The extent of their “Scientific” analysis was to simply declare that since the UN-IPCC says so, it must be so. The US EPA made no independent analysis as required by law. PERIOD. Yes, the courts agreed with the EPA, and that is why the courts need to be “reset” and also de-politicised.
Congress determines what is a “pollutant” the EPA then controls those Pollutants. How does the UN decide what the USA decides to control and make rules for the USA?
usurbrain – I’m fully tracking with you on this statement. As I have posted before, this is the crux of the Clean Power Plan or the war on coal – the ‘Endangerment Finding’. Lay this finding bare for the false science it represents, and the whole thing collapses – there is no basis for controlling CO2 in industry. It is the reason of how and why – let’s leave the who’s aside for now, those come with the answers to the other questions – this was allowed to happen, and accepted as fact – it is these methods that have been used, to the detriment of the entire USA as well as the industrialized world, that need to be addressed. Bringing sound, scientific assessment studies to proposed and final rulemaking in the future, only when and where needed with competent and open oversight during the evaluation process. The way it used to be done, without partisanship.
If you’ll allow my opinion on the future state of the EPA – Basic, Federal level rules appear to be a sound baseline for the entire nation. These would be clean air, water, and soils – cleanliness requirements either based upon existing vetted science and at established Threshold Limit Values or Parts Per , or if and when additional study scientifically proves additional constituent pollutants need be regulated, or quantities of releases reduced, all must be based upon replicable scientific studies, coupled with full cost-benefit analyses (with sound and accurate emphasis on both sides of the coast-to-benefit equations in the studies, unlike what happened with the one-sided Social Cost of Carbon equations). Such basic rules then apply to all States in the Union. This is how it is done now. Also, currently each state must comply with the baseline Federal standard, but is free to institute steps more stringent than the Federal standard, when compiling and promulgating local rules, and inspecting the regulated industries for compliance to those rules.
I am of the opinion, it is the Federal rulemaking process is where it has spun out of whack. Reining in the purpose of EPA, back to it’s original , minimal, baseline rulemaking to be applied across the states needs to be accomplished. Chasing ever smaller bits of perceived pollutants, such as for current example PFOA’s (perfluorooctanoic acid, associated with Teflon, fire-resistant fabric treatments, also Fire Fighting Foam use, see: http://www.cancer.org/cancer/cancer-causes/teflon-and-perfluorooctanoic-acid-pfoa.html) has not been conclusively found to be a harm at levels found in the environment, but rulemaking and restrictions in water and other areas are being developed (see: https://www.epa.gov/ground-water-and-drinking-water/drinking-water-health-advisories-pfoa-and-pfos). Sound science? Overreach? Rulemaking prior to properly coming to a conclusion? Precautionary principle? The real questions they are now trying to answer are: we found this stuff in the environment – the harms are currently inconclusive – man’s activities caused the presence in the environment – let’s start rules to monitor and/or reduce releases before we conclude the studies – all that matters is that we have covered our a**es if it is found to be harmful – no big deal if it found to be relatively benign at levels currently found – at least we are doing our jobs by finding new stuff to regulate – the ‘no harm no foul’ approach.
This is an issue for now, for our times. Balance must be found. Somewhere in there is correct approach. The way it has been going is not the correct choice of direction, though.
But I rant…
Regards,
MCR
Michael C. Roberts January 25, 2017 at 1:18 pm
Your response reminded me of the idiocy of the limits for Radon. Another EPA pet project. From http://www.radon.com/radon_levels/
“What is a Safe level of Radon Gas? — This is the simpler of the two questions. A safe level of radon gas is no radon gas. Radon gas is a carcinogen which causes lung cancer. The US EPA has put it plainly, stating, “Any radon exposure has some risk of causing lung cancer. The lower the radon level in your home, the lower your family’s risk of lung cancer.” The average person receives a higher dose of radiation from the radon levels in their home than from their combined exposure to all other radiation sources, natural or man-made. Radon gas is a naturally-occurring byproduct of the radioactive decay of Uranium in the soil. Depending on your geographic location, the radon levels of the air you breathe outside of your home may be as high as 0.75 pCi/L. The national average of outside radon levels is 0.4 pCi/L and it is estimated by the National Academy of Sciences that outdoor radon levels cause approximately 800 of the 21,000 radon induced lung cancer deaths in the US each year. Your risk of lung cancer increases substantially with exposure to higher radon levels. Lung cancer risk rises 16% per 2.7 pCi/L increase in radon exposure. World Health Organization, 2009 studies show that radon is the primary cause of lung cancer among people who have never smoked. However, the absolute numbers of radon-induced lung cancers are much larger in people who smoke, or who have smoked in the past, due to a strong combined effect of smoking and radon.”
“Radon Act 51 passed by Congress set the natural outdoor level of radon gas (0.4 pCi/L) as the target radon level for indoor radon levels.”
Now some truth. 75% of the population of the USA lives in areas where the outside air radon level is ABOVE 0.4 pCi/L
Now visit the American Lung Association.
http://www.lung.org/lung-health-and-diseases/lung-disease-lookup/lung-cancer/resource-library/lung-cancer-fact-sheet.html?referrer=https://www.google.com/
Note that all their numbers of deaths, causes, etc. are “Estimates.”
Now look at this web site. (I do not endorse his opinion or analysis that is your decision. There are two good maps though.} It is rather glaring that northern California Northern Michigan and the Mississippi river basin are both low areas of radon yet have very high cancer deaths.
My opinion is that the analysis and proof has not been established.
Worse yet, read the first paragraph above by radon,com a few times so that you understand it. Now think of your next-door neighbors or parents. Assume they become concerned about Radon. There have been quite a few lately on TV here. They call a local Radon testing facility. Do you have any doubt that the “inspector” will leave that house without selling them a Radon Abetment System? A system that will simply blow the air in the basement to the outside, and do absolutely nothing for their health. Reminds me of the CAGW program.
Repeal the renewable energy ITC. The strong players will do fine without all the fake business models competing with them and agency waste anyway. That includes the companies set up by former politicos for the purpose of mining grants, loans, and tax credits.
But it was only six months or so ago that congress extended the subsidies for wind and solar power for five years.
Amend it with a phase out and sunset.
Maybe.
Tesla can manage.
Scotland just announced its aiming at the first unsubsidised wind farm.
And all of this sacrifice is in order to make, at best, a minuscule contribution to an overstated environmental threat.”
B I N G O !
and those that advocated for the cabinet position were told this would happen and chose not to believe it.
thanks
Reminds me of my communist acquaintances. This time it will work.
That’s right. They just didn’t have enough of it, before.
2015 Report EPA Criminal Enforcement Program spent $715 million since 2006 – including an EPA disclosed $6.5 million on military-style weapons – detailed in a recent oversight report by our organization, OpenTheBooks.com
Why does the EPA need it’s own army? Aren’t there other resources available, like the US Marshals, that can handle those rare situations where an armed response is required? I was once told by someone about the EPA – “Those are some scary dudes. They can ruin you on a whim, and you can’t touch them.”
Not just the EPA, but the Dept of Education has been acquiring it’s own army as well.
EPA, Dept of Education, IRS, etc. need to be stripped of all Weapons. If those agencies need to enforce Laws, then they can go through Dept. of Justice, filing proper charges, seeking required arrest warrants or asset freezes, and let Federal Marshals** handle enforcement and arrests.
** I would say F.B.I., but that agency has become politically corrupt, and needs to be replaced, and then shutdown. Same goes for BATF. That agency has needlessly started and caused several tragic events in U.S., and tends to act in arrogant (and to frequently an ignorant) manner.
Think tanks?
EPA needs to only have interstate responsibilities. Ie., Drilling and mining are intrastate, rivers are interstate. Only proven science should be allowed for adopting regulations. Of course corrupt government will always be capable of corrupting the system but we must take care not to let the pendulum swing too far like we always do. Perhaps the EPA should be a very limited body for resolving interstate squabbles on environmental issues. Kind of like a supreme court of environmental regulation. Of course we see what politics has done to the Supreme Court. So, never mind.
This is basic human nature; people are easily corruptible. One of the many reasons that collectivist type governments don’t work. But even in the face of that, we can’t give up. We just need to remain vigilant. Voting in people like Trump is one way to combat government corruption. And if he becomes corrupt over time? Then we replace him too. It never ends, just like any other chore; you just have to keep up with it or you get a huge mess.
The best way is to make sure that there are no concentrations of powers.
That’s why the constitution set up this country as a federation of states. Each state was to take care of it’s own business, and the federal government only dealt with those things that were beyond the scope of individual states. Foreign policy, national defense, etc.
They set up the senate as the body that represented the interests of the states, and would fight against federal encroachment on the rights of the states.
When we made senators elected positions instead of being appointed by the state legislatures, we signed the death notice for the states as separate political entities.
EPA-like problems will remain in some of the states unless the Congress intervenes. The California Air Resources Board and its regional spawn that are every bit as radicalized as the EPA if not more so are examples. I am sure that New York’s and Massachusetts’s equivalents rank right up there as well. Prying their dead hands from the wheel will not be an easy task.
That’s a job for the citizens of CA, NY, MA, etc.
There has been substantial progress and success in clean and safe water, clean air and polluted soil remediation. Success means less work for bureaucrats and their masters and they have to find other dragons to hunt and kill….even if the dragons don’t exist. Career protection and taking $$ home are prime motivators.
Rather than a committee of the whole, you could also get from here to there via a series of interstate compacts between groups of states. This would allow states in separate regions to negotiate their own arrangements rather than getting back into the one size fits all routine that would fall out of a committee of the whole. Non-contiguous states like AK and HI could go their own way. Interstate compacts also need to be approved by congress. Cheers –
TTL is Solution
Every Agency enacted by Congress should have a Set maximum Time to Live, that cannot be extended. Power and control overreach is eliminated by extinction of agency. Along with political corruption inside agency.
EPA worked as design for first decade, towards end of its next decade EPA became politically corrupt, bloated, over-reaching, and out-of-control. Where do we see similar problems? IRS, NASA, CDC, NOAA, FBI, CIA, BLM, NSA, BATF, IRS (worth repeating).
For every Agency – Absolute max TTL = 20-years.
If soon to be TTL’d agency is truly necessary, a new one can be created as its replacement. Legislative mistakes of first version can be corrected. Regulations enacted by first one are nullified for its replacement, forcing a clean slate.
New blood is ensured as part of open hiring for replacement agency. Replacement for brief period does cause double budget hit. But it also means a lowered starting budget, and elimination of previous agency’s 20-years of bloated budget.
In the UK we call this programmed end time a “Sun set clause” inserted into the legislation.
Better to have a law that sets an automatic sunset clause for all legislation that can be ammended within each piece of legislation.
That way if they “forget” to include the provision, it still gets sunset.
now he just needs to give 12mo notice to pull out of UNFCCCP
Cool place to visit for far-right/alt-right drivel.
Yes, we need to shift more decision making to states that benefit monied white men only.
Hey Quest, does the Raytheon company in Dracut, MA (which is highly dependent on govt. contracts) support you using their Internet connection to spew personal opinions of hatred?
Might want to check that before you bloviate further. See their acceptable use policy. Have a nice day.
Quest,
why post the drivel you made,when it is obvious that you didn’t read the post?
The EPA created a bogeyman for the singular purpose of regulating industries it doesn’t like. You must not be bothered by the obvious leftist political bigotry running bogus arguments against a trace Molecule that is critical for life.
CO2 is NOT a pollutant and you know it!
By the way,Quest. It was a WHITE REPUBLICAN PRESIDENT,who pushed for the EPA into existence and run by a REPUBLICAN White man, who became it’s first director.
Go take you stupid,ignorant bigotry elsewhere!
If the country is as racist as you want to believe, how did we manage to elect an incompetent black man to the presidency, twice.
Excellent essay.
“I grew up in Sandusky, Ohio in the ’60’s. … And I still remember the Cuyahoga River catching fire.”
My roots go back to that area. My father would tell stories of about swimming in the Cuyahoga River visiting grandfather Hardy’s farm. I remember swimming in Lake Erie as a child before it was too polluted.
We moved to the Seattle area and then to the Santa Clara Valley. Many years later when my children could again swim in Lake Erie, my father was all excited because the places of his boyhood memories had been turned into a national recreation area.
I would point out to my father that my places of of boyhood memories had been turned into concrete cesspools. More freeways and stripmalls. The 60s were not good for Seattle area or the Santa Clara Valley (aka silicon valley).
Who knew that dumping carbon tetrachloride out the back door would contaminate the groundwater?
The BBC appear to be labeling this as a “war on knowledge”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-38746608
Are the recent actions taken by the Trump team on the issues of climate and energy the opening shots in a war on knowledge?
So are all these moves evidence of a malevolent mindset, determined to crush all this snowflake climate change chatter?
Definitely, according to Alden Meyer, a veteran climate campaigner with the Union of Concerned Scientists.
“President Trump and his team are pursuing what I call a ‘control-alt-delete’ strategy: control the scientists in the federal agencies, alter science-based policies to fit their narrow ideological agenda, and delete scientific information from government websites,” told BBC News.
“This is an across-the-board strategy that we are seeing at multiple federal agencies on a range of issues, though climate denialism is clearly the point of the spear.”
Send them this and remind them that if they over played shorter term El Nino temps and differences in cycle magnitude, then they sure don’t get it with longer term cycles.
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2017-01/ugs-fct012417.php
There were real issues with regards to pollution in the 60’s and 70’s. The EPA was formed and resolved those problems by the 80’s. That was a huge undertaking starting from ‘ground zero’ and was a success. Reduce the size of the EPA to something smaller than that of 1980. Maybe considerably smaller as we now have state agencies in all states now and nowhere near the issues that existed in the 60’s.
Hey, if you had a broken leg and it is now healed it’s time to remove the cast and stop the payments to the doctor. Of course the doctor may continue to claim that you need the cast for the rest of your life so you don’t break that same leg again. But then stumbling around with the cast may cause a fall that would cause a broken arm. Rinse and repeat and soon you would be ‘armor plated’ with casts on all your limbs. That would be crippling, but not to the doctor.
We could call it “cash for/from clunkers” by the elimination of most of the EPA and would be good for the environment, both economically and physically.
eyesonu January 25, 2017 at 9:54 am
There were real issues with regards to pollution in the 60’s and 70’s. The EPA was formed and resolved those problems by the 80’s. That was a huge undertaking starting from ‘ground zero’ and was a success. Reduce the size of the EPA to something smaller than that of 1980. Maybe considerably smaller as we now have state agencies in all states now and nowhere near the issues that existed in the 60’s.
You’re dreaming if you think that the pollution problems were resolved by the 80s. Many contamination problems caused by private companies who later went bankrupt leaving a problem for someone else to fix. I recently collaborated with an EPA team working with the State DEP to clear up a polluted site, it took about 2 years and the State was very happy to have the assistance of the EPA.
Those problems are covered and for the most part already resolved by the superfund law.
It really is amazing the number of things you don’t know.
What state and what site did you consult with regards to? Maybe I can help you.
MarkW January 25, 2017 at 2:38 pm
Those problems are covered and for the most part already resolved by the superfund law.
The Superfund is seriously underfunded, the number of superfund cleanups carried out dropped to 8 in 2014. Most cleanups are now funded by negotiating consent orders with the polluter. There are currently over 1,000 Superfund sites but no money in the fund!
eyesonu January 25, 2017 at 4:05 pm
What state and what site did you consult with regards to? Maybe I can help you.
Not necessary thanks, everything was dealt with satisfactorily by last summer, many tons of contaminated soil transported to an out of state facility and replaced with clean soil.
Phil,
I will assume that you would agree that the EPA should get out of the business of regulations and focus on cleaning up Superfund sites. If so, then we are in agreement.
Phil,
Actually the EPA should leave the clean-ups to someone else. Their track record is not so good these days. Maybe better if they sweep the walks and parking areas and pick up trash in a park somewhere. They could do less harm with that than flippin’ burgers.
There are multiple fundamental problems when US government policy is based on fake science and when there is obvious evidence of manipulation of the temperature record to push CAGW. The Trump administration is trying to get control of the CAGW mania.
CAGW was and is fake news/science.
There are more than a dozen independent observations and analysis results that support the assertion that the majority of the warming in the last 150 years was due to solar cycle changes rather than the increase in atmospheric CO2.
For example (a subset of the observations and analysis results that indicate there is no CAGW, not even AGW), an EPA suppressed report that notes based on observations and analysis “the global temperature change cannot be attributed to increasing CO2 concentrations” in the atmosphere.
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/endangermentcommentsv7b1.pdf
It is a fact that the planet warms and then cools cyclically correlating with solar cycle changes.
http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/davis-and-taylor-wuwt-submission.pdf
“Who knew that dumping carbon tetrachloride out the back door would contaminate the groundwater?”
To answer my own question, the nuclear industry! From the beginning, even for the Manhattan Project; protecting the public, protecting workers, and protecting the environment was a systematic process. Thirty years later our best practices were codies and the regulations enforced by the NRC based on science not politics.
Furthermore, we did have to kill tens of thousands before implementing process safety regulations. It was not until 1996 that EPA issued a rule.
At commercial nuke plants, the NRC enforces these EPA and OSHA regulations.
I think you meant to say “…did NOT have to kill…”
Thanks Paul, I jst hate it when I leave ‘not’ our of a sentance.One the problems with proff reading your own stuff, is you know what you wanbt ti say.
When I was working tried to get done a few days early, so I could let her proff read. Laughter is good in the work place, if it at others.
Ok now we see where all the leftist rhetoric is converging to.
Apparently, WUWT is now a white supremacist gathering place and Anthony is the Grand Wizard.
How low can the leftists go in their rhetoric?
I hope they keep going, lower, lower, and more incredulously closer to Lewandowsky.
Yes, it’s fun watching the far lefties self-destruct.
Lots of Liberal s’plodely heads going off all over the place. And Trump hasn’t even been in office a week!
And the way to handle it, for the most part, is: ignore them.
What WUWT really is is self-evident.
Anyone genuinely interested in knowing what WUWT is about will see the truth. The others do — not — matter.
Like a fluttering sparrow or a darting swallow,
an undeserved curse does not come to rest.
Proverbs 26:2
It depends on what the meaning of is is is.
🙂
Another positive step!
Report: Trump Administration Freezes EPA Grant Programs
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/01/24/report-trump-administration-freezes-epa-grant-programs/