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Guest essay by Eric Worrall
President Trump is fulfilling his promise to remove the burden of intrusive EPA climate regulation on the US economy. But even more drastic action to curtail EPA activities is in the pipeline.
U.S. EPA staff told to prepare for Trump executive orders: sources
By David Shepardson, Timothy Gardner and Richard Valdmanis | WASHINGTON
Staff at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency have been told that President Donald Trump is preparing a handful of executive orders to reshape the agency, to be signed once a new administrator is confirmed, two sources who attended the meeting told Reuters on Wednesday.
A senior EPA official who had been briefed by members of the Trump administration mentioned the executive orders at a meeting of staffers in the EPA’s Office of General Counsel on Tuesday, but did not provide details about what the orders would say, said the sources, who asked not to be named.
“It was just a heads-up to expect some executive orders, that’s it,” one of the sources said.
…
Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-epa-idUSKBN15U2MW
EPA officials might not have much time to comply with the new rules, because of a bill which has just been introduced to Congress.
H.R.861 – To terminate the Environmental Protection Agency.
02/03/2017 Referred to House Science, Space, and Technology
Read more: https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/861
The new EPA abolition bill is at a very early stage, and has to cross a number of hurdles before making it to the desk of President Trump. But returning power and responsibility for clean air and water to the states, reducing federal interference in everyday affairs, is likely to be a very attractive proposition for President Trump and his supporters.
Wow! And about time.
I’m elated!
I’m not, there are legitimate issues, frequently involving multiple states that need addressing and will continue to need addressing. The Progressives have packed the Federal Agencies with kindred spirits and the Federal Civil Service regulations have made removing an over-reaching or incompetent bureaucrat from their position it has forced us into the unpalatable position of having to “Nuc’em the entire Agency from orbit to be sure”. There is going to be a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth, but they brought this on themselves, I completely blame the destruction of the EPA on the Progressive’s agenda.
I will admit that they did predict there will be climate refugees, I just never expected them to be from the EPA.
Well the point is that climate control is quite beyond the capability of mankind, so it does not become a part of the EPA charter, which is protection of the environment, not remaking it.
G
Paul, legitimate multi-state issues could be addressed by having something like an environment division with the Interior Department. Until creation of the EPA in 1971?, the complaints were that states were addressing environmental issues differently, leading to charges of “competing” with other states for jobs among industries (such as coal mining). All the issues that prompted the agency’s creation have been addressed decades ago, it is now a bureaucracy in search of a purpose, filled with highly paid environmentalists.
Paul – You are correct – it is virtually impossible under the existing Civil Service Regulations to fire civil service after a short probationary period: BUT… it IS possible (and often desirable) to transfer those most intractable to other locations to work [assuming they do ANY work anyway]. I suggest transfer of any EPA employee above grade GS14 to a new building to be constructed about 25 mi N of Fairbanks AK. There is a housing shortage there but tents can be provided.
Not Fairbanks, Shemya in the Aleutians. I understand there is an air station on that island, and according to a service member I met once, has the worst weather of any US possession.
Me too!!
Be terrific if it happened. A new hope for freedom and local government in this country. At this point all you probably need is a small staff of about a dozen specialists attached to the Justice Department just to handle emergency situations. But realistically it won’t happen. Congressmen introduce bills all the time to get their name in the press and then their bills quietly die in committee.
Not going to happen. You need a fillibuster-proof Senate majority to disband the EPA. Even if you had 60 Republicans, there are a few squishy nervous nellies that would defect.
The filibuster is a non issue. The democrats took it off the table with the nuclear option.
Once Federal EPA is gone, states having to compete with each other
for jobs and revenue should keep their EPAs in line. Excepting Kalifornia.
It’s much more important than that. The EPA has been enforcing the Clean Water Act to put unbearable regulatory and financial pressures on farmers and ranchers, and quite deliberately so. It’s ethically, though not legally, criminal.
The regulations have, for decades, been the pry-bar of legal terrorism by green NGOs and their bureaucratic fellow-travelers to advance their plan to force people off their land, and return the countryside to a state of sacred green purity.
Returning regulatory authority to the states will, in many cases, almost immediately remove those burdens. It will allow citizens of those states a chance to redress their injury, and to recover their rights through the vote and through legal challenge.
The term is “unconscionable behaviour”.
All federal land, with the exception of military bases and government buildings themselves, need to be turned over to the states.
First there needs to be an inventory of all federally owned and controlled property, along with assessments of their market values. Then the federal agencies need to identify the properties they must retain and make a strong economic case for each one they want to keep. The remainder need to be sold to reduce the Federal debt or turned over to states or other agencies if they aren’t marketable. If the states want to buy any of the marketable properties or take them in lieu of other federal funding, that’s fine.
In southern Oregon, a rancher was imprisoned for ‘stealing rain water’ – literally, because he had a pond for fire water on his property – in compliance with the law, by the way – but because the water from the sky is apparently government property, he was jailed.
Really.
I should have allowed for the obvious exceptions, such as Yosemite National Park. Let the state of California manage it instead of it being a federal expense.
“Returning regulatory authority to the states will, in many cases, almost immediately remove those burdens.”
Except in Kalifornia and a few other blue cesspools.
brian: At least then, it will be the responsibility of the residents of those states.
@joel – no, not really. There’s a difference between a pond getting filled and building a dam across a river.
http://www.snopes.com/politics/crime/rainwater.asp
No offence intended, but please check your sources.
If the Federal EPA is removed, states may succumb to an economic incentive to decrease their regulatory burden on polluters – making the state more attractive to those industries, at a cost to the clean air and water of the state’s citizens. Additionally, clean air and water are not constrained by state lines; these are boundaries that are nonsensical in terms of ecological interactions. Centralized, federal regulations on the environment are appropriate because of the nature of nature. States already have much power in terms of how they choose to comply with federal regulations.
This is something that argues for a national level agency. To regain control, it is only necessary to make Congress accountable for the measures enacted. No more bureaucratic rule making. Congresscritters set the pollution levels, action levels, etc. Folks don’t like that, they vote in someone who’ll change the levels. That was the key error when the EPA was first set up.
In other words you say it should be up to the citizens of the State, just what controls they want to have on their environment.
Seems about right to me.
G
People at the state level have enough sense to recognize the difference between excessive regulations that put people out of work and reasonable ones that provide real benefits. Allowing states to compete with each to optimize the trade-offs will produce a better balance than one-size-fits-all fiats coming from distant and ideologically motivated bureaucrats.
Air quality in the US is already better than in a lot of Europe, and they’re not all dying slow and painful deaths. And tourists aren’t staying away. See https://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/health-sapping.html
States that pollute across borders are subject to lawsuit in a Federal court. This is sufficient to prevent or remediate most negligent pollution. Deliberate pollution is a crime. It doesn’t seem as though a centralized agency is necessary.
Also, the culture has changed considerably since 1950. People are aware of pollution and don’t want it. Attitudes have changed, so has behavior, and the resistance against pollution has become part of the general culture.
I’m not worried about disappearing the EPA.
Pat Frank is a voice of reason in a swamp full of statists, red and blue and green.
State control has the potential for better results. The Feds have been (until now) taken over by the far-left zealots who are addicted to power and control of the people. The changes must be backed up with legislation to prevent a future Obama from easily reversing them.
I hope just a beginning to ending the CAGW scam but welcomed for sure.
Tom Nelson @tan123 15h15 hours ago
Trump’s likely science adviser calls climate scientists ‘glassy-eyed cult’ https://twitter.com/tan123/status/831868735313043458
All social systems have issues that pulse or cycle in popularity. Nothing stays around forever. You can fit a normal distribution curve to any issue just as that guy did in predicting peak oil based on similar analysis. With or without any administration, the cycle on climate concern has peaked, and is in decline. This is the basis of their hysteria, not realizing that they don’t have forever, but just a certain window of finite time to have influence until public and government funding moves on to some other topic. Think of climate concern like a fashion fad. The only difference being fashion fads last 2 years, and this has been going on much longer. But the 30 year ramp up does not predict a 30 year ramp down. It can be a skewed peak with a precipitous fall in funding and interest going forward. The key reason for the fall is that nothing has stuck as due to a climate alarmism issue affecting anyone noticeably, and a long history of bad prognostications. Like the CA megadrought supposedly of an unprecedented scale not seen in modern civilization lasting 2 years, culminating in horrific rains this year and a possible dam failure from its neglect. Well, you don’t have to worry about flooding in a megadrought, so I guess no one got around to the emergency spillway drainage being lined in rap rock, just throw in some dirt, that will do.
Any agency that deems CO2 to be a pollutant does not deserve funding of even one cent in its lifetime! It should be abolished immediately, and any of its officials should be barred from any and all future governmental positions! They needn’t be barred from positions in the real world, as they’ll be shot down for any such positions for which they might apply.
Sad at thought of closure.There is a need for some regulation, sensible regulation against companies that do seriously wrong things. Just not an activist agency pursuing political activities.
Best may be to close it down as too much baggage and reopen a smaller non CO2 review agency.
The few good things that it did at the federal level, which probably still needs federal oversight, can be assigned to other agencies. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves, this bill still has a long, long way to go.
@ angech and paul penrose . I agree with both of you, please guys let’s not go overboard and lose sight of the fact that for years we have been rational and used clear evidence that things were very wrong at the EPA., but as the saying goes,
” Let’s not throw out the baby with the bathwater”.
There are useful regulations the EPA enforces, but the notion of having a special agency just to enforce environmental regulations leads to abue.
There are congressional Republicans who will oppose it. I think the EPA is needed at the national level for one reason. If an individual state imposes laws that impinge on the commerce of a giant corporation, that corporation can tie the laws up in court for decades. Small states would be no match for them. If several states band together to gang up on the corp, the corp could spin-off separate companies, one for each state. Etc. The national govt just has more stroke. Of course, big corps can then move the nasty stuff offshore, in some cases. Kind of like how Kaliphornia is outsourcing its CO2 emissions to surrounding states. Is there no limit to the folly of mankind?
“But let’s not get ahead of ourselves, this bill still has a long, long way to go.”
I would be surprised if the EPA is completely abolished. I’m thinking there will be an EPA with much reduced power over people’s lives after the main responsibility for the environment is returned to the States.
Ken, if a company spins itself off into little companies, by definition the little companies will not have the financial resources of the original company.
Beyond that, the idea that companies have these huge pots of money hidden in a back room somewhere is ridiculous. Even small states, with their ability to coerce taxes can out spend all but the largest of multi-national conglomerates.
So who is it that throws out the bath water ??
g
NAFTA/North American Free Trade Agreement.
angech,
Sad to read your involutary emphasis of the boilerplate stereotype that industry should be hounded. This is a post about alleged sins of the EPA, a bigger scene.
It is not just a stereotype, it is a sad fact. But there is no need for federal EPA, unless you want Californians to decide what Texas does.
Emphasis on hounding industry would not be so stereotypical if industry’s propensities to pollute weren’t so typical. Corporations need supervision, just like governments do. Yes, the EPA must be dramatically reigned in. Disbanding would not be IMO out of the question. But some of its function must be maintained, perhaps in Interior.
Disagree with Geoff S. Yes, EPA has been misused as a political tool. But we need environmental protection at the federal label. Industry will soft-pedal environmental matters if it gets in the way of profit. Safeguarding the environment is expensive and time-consuming, and business should not be expected to do this without guidance.
EPA needs a good director who will follow the traditional regulatory model, and who won’t seek to supplant Congress as an enactor of climate legislation.
U.S. Embassy & Consulates in Canada
CEC Ministerial Statement
Re: Gina McCarthy and CEC ( HQ, Montreal ) and the Paris momentum.
https://ca.usembassy.gov/tag/epa-administrator-gina-mccarthy
CEC/Commission for Environmental Cooperation, HQ Montreal, Canada
CEC is a NAFTA side agreement. Canada, Mexico and the U.S.
http://www.cec.org/about-us/jpac/jpac-members
angech. Agree with you, always sad to see an Agency go or be significantly prevented from performing their lawful duties of benefit to the country.
But EPA and its co-conspirator agencies went way too far.
For example in arid and semiarid areas of the West, ephemeral stream channels that flow << 1% of the time during a year we often defined as Waters of the United States, i.e. navigable waters and thus regulated by the US Government. Although these, dry, rocky and sandy channels may only a few meters wide and have flow for a few hours a year, the EPA deems then navigable waters and then seized government control over them. Doesn't matter that they may be 100s of miles from the nearest mountain river (navigable by rubber raft or inner tubes or fly fisherman), they can still be seized as "Navigable Waters of the U.S.)
These rules also are applied in humid areas of the countries where a small stream may pond on a farmer's field in a natural or man-made depression. That the stream may be only a foot or two wide and the pond surface area a fraction of an acre, they are still regulated by EPA as waters of the U.S. In the arid areas or on farmlands it would be a sight to see a destroyer plowing through the sand and rocks or navigating around in a half acre pond. These are examples of their regulation.
The EPA also used the "Sue and Settle" method to gain regulatory control over areas of land that Congress would never grant. So, the solution was for the EPA to secretly go to one of the radical green organizations and ask them to sue the EPA and they would settle and gain the regulatory power over that area of land by order of a court of law. Then the EPA would deliberately lose the suit, settle with the green organization and pay them a huge settlement, and have the court order EPA to regulate the land area in dispute. Ah ha! Objective achieved and now the green organization has made a ton of money and will gladly sue anytime the EPA requests a suit.
They used this method and the Navigable Waters of the U.S scams to grab land areas they wanted to control. Both are efficient ways to attack individuals or companies they dislike and grab their land. These determinations eliminated using the expensive "eminent domain" lawsuit that the government most often lost in court. Moreover, the Waters of the U.S. or Sue and settle verdicts gave them national control of all lands falling under the jusdiction of these methods of land grabbing.
The EPA should be told to protect clean air and water and stay out of their crooked schemes. Thus, their budget could be reduced by 80-90% and they would be left doing the job which was originally intended for the EPA.
The EPA should also be required to follow the law (ignored by the EPA with the willing complicity of the previous admin) that they at least provide some estimate of economic effect of their proposed regulations, i.e., job loss, disruption of manufacturing,etc.
Sue and settle. What a travesty. Our law schools should yank the diplomas from any attorney who took part in any of those actions. The licensing agencies that granted licenses to those same crooks should yank their licenses. Our Founding Fathers are spinning in their graves. How can thos attorneys look at themselves in the mirror without cringing?
Q: What is the difference between a jellyfish and a lawyer?
A: One’s a spineless, poisonous blob. The other is a form of sea life.
Sorry. I just couldn’t resist.
Actually, wetlands rules can be laid at the feet of the Army Corp of Engineers. As a lawyer I was involved in that arena. I have mixed feelings about the wetlands rules.
Q: What is the difference between
===================
a lawyer and a mosquito.
A: One is a blood-sucking parasite, the other is an insect.
Q: What is the difference between
===================
a Lawyer and a Vampire.
A: Vampires quit sucking when you’re dead.
OK Enough with picking on Vampires and Mosquitos.
This is a terrible idea. The EPA provides a valuable and necessary function. The problem is a combination of laws written in lazy manner that allows the executive branch to legislate through regulation and the judicial branch to further legislate through judicial review. Take the clean air act: Congress passes a law requiring the EPA to regulate pollution with no definition of what a pollutant is. EPA then classified CO2 as a pollutant because of the laws broad scope. Then the EPA re-writes law because of the specific thresholds in CAA can’t effectively be used in regards to CO2 and 4 supreme Court justices thought that the EPA changing specifically defined thresholds was perfectly reasonable. We need clean air and clean water and this can’t effectively be done at the state level. Congress needs to stop passing broad laws that enable the executive branch to interpret them based on their political ideology or that enable activist NGOs to shape the law.
+1
gee, bretts – that’s exactly the same problem with socialism – it just hasn’t been done right.
(whoever doesn’t get irony- too bad)
EPA regulations cost our economy an estimated $1T+/year. Whatever it is you think we’re getting for that much most certainly is not worth that much.
Agree with Angech. Let’s not have a kneejerk purge of federal government just because some libertarians want to return us to a simpler time. But Obama used the EPA to supplant a recalcitrant Congress who balked at aggressive climate limitation, and that practice should die a hasty death.
We need an environmentally- focused regulatory agency at the federal level. Historically the EPA has done a decent job.
I would not refer to the Gold King Mine as “decent job.” This environmental disaster was caused by the EPA ignoring expert opinion, and their own internal requirements for hazards review. The fact that no one was held accountable by the EPA for what happened is, in my humble opinion, reason enough to at least slash this organization to a much smaller entity.
No government agency, or any organization run by human beings, is going to be free of screw-ups, and of wrongheadedness for that matter.
Look, I’m not the champion of the EPA or of the government in general. But environmental protection is a job no one else will do and is a classic government responsibility. We should the EPA it and make it run as well as it can.
I am more in agreement with Brook HURD than not. Maybe one of the things that needs to be legislated is making individual administrators responsible for their actions rather than just blanket Sovereign Immunity coverage.
Rhoda R – if you make administrators pesonally responsible you won’t find anybody to take the job – simple as that.
scraft1,
With respect, horsesh*t! your rationalization for government administrators getting away with incompetence, political bias, and fr*ud is because they wouldn’t take the job if they were held accountable?? Then f*ck that, get rid of the job. That’s not what my tax dollars should be paying for.
In the private sector, presidents, CEOs, CFOs’ and whatever other lettered positions of authority are held personally responsible all the time. it’s called ACCOUNTABILITY! It seems that the only people who have a lot of responsibility, get paid ridiculous salaries, have great benefits, and NO accountability are government employees. I daresay that if you started holding government heads as accountable as people in the private sector, 1) things would start to change, and 2) responsible leaders in the private sector who understand accountability would be more than willing to take jobs as government administrators.
After nearly 50 years of bureaucratic expansion and leeching off of taxpayers, it is hardly a knee-jerk reaction to abolish the cesspool.
Have done a decent job – compared to what, exactly?
@scraft
There was clear gross negligence at the Gold King Mine. The local EPA honcho, the EPA site foreman, the EPA engineers responsible for designing, reviewing, and approving the “plan” and the direct supervisor for the local honcho all need to be given their walking papers. There was an EPA regional administrator who said “crucify a few malefactors and the rest will fall in line” or words to that effect. What’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.
Well, the Clean Air Act doesn’t go away. Violators could still be taken to court and fined.
As others have said, EPA did perform some regulation that benefited us all in terms of clean water and air. However, once they accomplished those major goals, the apparatus was still there, waiting to be used. They could not leave well enough alone. So they adopted a sort of linear no-threshold theory that if x was bad, 1/10 x must be good and then 1/100 x must be 10 times better. And we have been stuck with what I call “rule by analysis,” where our ability to analyze decreasingly lower concentrations of emissions means we get decreasing lower permit limits, no matter what the effect is on any life.
Then consider the way Congress has abdicated their regulatory responsibility to make law. Read one of these 1000-200 page rules and count how many places where the Administrator (head of EPA) has discretion to determine how something is enforced or what it applies to. You could say that is good because the new administrator can use that discretion to change how the law is applied, but it gob smacks industry because no one knows what is going to happen after the next election and they will have to turn on a dime yet again.
If you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
1000-2000 page rules….
Remember “The Art of the Deal”.
Start at one extreme (Close it DOWN!) and end with a compromise.
DJT and Pruitt have all the cards.
Abolition is not a good idea. Reformation is. Starts with minor revisions to basic EPA Laws.
Agreed. Pollution crosses borders. It would be really annoying to be downwind of unscrubbed coal fired generators in another state.
You mean like the yellow river that went through two states. Wait, that pollution was caused by the EPA.
‘unscrubbed coal-fired generators’ – you mean a power plant would actually spend $$$$$Millions to rip the scrubbers back out? Doesn’t make any financial sense.
LOL. The EPA is not responsible, and that is because it has too much freedom to operate.
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes.
To hell it wasn’t.
Reformation of huge bureaucracies like the EPA is not possible. The institutional inertia is just too great; civil servants are hard to fire except under special circumstances (like the closure of the program). Minor revisions to their operating procedures will have as much effect as spitting into a hurricane.
Expecting major theatrics for Pruitt’s confirmation?
Except, civil servants without positions are not hard to layoff/fire/retire. Eliminating their job is the easiest method of reducing workers.
Executive Administrative Staff (EAS) are not guaranteed positions. They are guaranteed due process in disciplinary or exemplary matters. Losing the jobs in toto, is neither disciplinary nor exemplary.
Senior Executive Staff (SES) operate under contracts and can be let go at any time.
Some low level laborer positions might be under rules of “most senior” or “most qualified”; but the contracts are explicit, those rules of positions are only valid within the building/institution.
It is easy to fill out and submit requests for transfer to other organizations with exact duplicative positions; but there is no guaranty of a transfer.
If they’re smart, they’ll decide which states they like best and get their applications in early.
The critical lesson of the EPA is identical to the critical lessons of the UN and the IPCC. Power concentrated into a single agency is a magnet for power-mad ideologues and political nut-cases.
They move in like bees to honey (like flies to poo-poo is more apt, given the malign process), and take over. The first one in any position of authority hires only ideological allies.
Political discipline is the test, not merit. The agency aggrandizes power and loses competence, simultaneously. This is exactly what we’ve seen in the UN, in the IPCC, and in the EPA.
If our freedoms are to be sustained, more than anything, concentration of power is to be avoided, or dispersed if it has gotten a foothold.
The founders separated powers with exactly this in mind.
Environmental powers divided among the states may be less efficient, but it will be more moderate, more easily held to rational standards, and have much less power to shove ideological purity down the throat of the entire country.
Even in states, it’s hard to control the partisan take-over. Here in CA, the California Air Resources Board is in the hands of enviro-nutters and has been out of control for decades.
Reformation of huge bureaucracies like the EPA is not possible.
Yes – time to re-read Parkinson’s Law.
Pat Frank. Very well said. I wish I could express myself so clearly. I hope you don’t mind if I quote you.
Thanks, Ken, be my guest. 🙂
Maybe between @commieBob and @Paul Penrose there is an ultimate middle ground. In my estimation the EPA did at its most basic serve a purpose when it was first created. Now not so much. Start over. Clean slate.
I would want clean air, clean water. What I would not want is an EPA that can/will fine me for what happens with puddles that form on my property.
Keep in mind these are the thoughts of an expat American. Used to live in The States, now comfortably residing in Australia as one of its citizens.
so aussiebear…have you noticed how many of the rules n regs americans are still refusing to be controlled by(rainwatertanks being an exception here) that we Aussies already have in place?
the control of water one and the recent attempt to tax dam water on farms in SA ?
the NLIS idiocy sold to aus BY verizon using us as testpigs to then try n enforce it back home?
our own EPA is luckily divided by states and regs from one to the other vary widely,makes a mockery of one state banning something while a few k away its legal.
reusing old tyres being an issue I have had some recent EPA run ins on.
my state okays them to burnt for fuel ! aproved places of course.
BUT no other uses to stop burning as waste or for landuse remedial is allowed.
at the same time theyve approved earthship homes.
go figure.
I agree. They need some kind of oversight to make sure they don’t go beyond their legislated mandate. There are so many horror stories about land owners being totally shafted because of imaginary environmental concerns. The snail darter controversy is an example of how a project, on which hundreds of millions of dollars had already been spent, can be derailed.
If you look hard enough, you are likely to find a species of invertebrate that has never been seen before. link Most species of invertebrates have yet to be found and classified. That means there is almost no project which cannot be stopped.
It’s the nature of any bureaucracy to expand.
It is also the nature of any regulatory agency to eventually be taken over and controlled by the industry that it is regulating.
It doesn’t matter how many additional layers of over site you put over the EPA, eventually they will be taken over by the bureaucrats that have taken over the EPA.
The only solution is to burn it to the ground once a generation and start over from scratch, with new people.
I do support having some oversight of the State’s EPAs at the Federal level. I could even be convinced that a dedicated organization be created for this purpose. But it should be a replacement of the current EPA and not a cabinet level department, as environmental issues often draw emotional responses which are ripe for abuse and manipulation of public sentiment. As MarkW said, “burn it the the ground and start over”.
They are a rogue agency, filled with rogue employees – and they don’t need no stinkin’ laws! The laws that are on the books, they ignore, twist, and/or over-enforce, depending on their ideological objective.
You don’t “reform” career criminals – you remove the opportunity for them to commit their crimes. Same with the EPA.
And the only way to eliminate a Civil “Service” employee is by eliminating their job.
Serious reform, please. Want some reasons to reform? Browse the Pacific Legal Foundation website. Look at the property rights cases, such as Duarte. PLF has been winning at SCOTUS but serious re-education of EPA and CoE staff needs to be done.
Agree with ristvan.
I disagree.
The minute the libs take over the elected government again the EPA, IRS and other rogue depts will get right back to where there left off.
End the federal EPA thuggery.
Let the states do the right thing.
45 ya when Nixon created the EPA there was no internet so polluting companies could ignore damage.
Today, no way!
Time to take out the EPA employee trash.
Limit the number of people employed by the EPA – especially those who are not directly involved with sampling and testing.
That’s how we ended up with Micro$oft Windows.
Layers of bandaids on top of bandaids.
Clean slates are better to work with.
The Gattling gun, is NOT backwards compatible with the Long Bow !
G
Where I would disagree with Rud is the “special prosecutor” effect. It might take abolition to do away with the overreach of the current EPA. Returning jurisdiction to Interior or Justice might do away with the tendency to keep setting standards on “pollution” ever lower, despite no real heath or economic benefit.
It would be good to split it’s power. Interior could get the standards setting role, eg air and water polution standards. Justice could get the enforcement role.
That too. Having a special agency attracts yahoos.
Not a bad approach – especially if tied to the idea that Congress has to approve any new regulation. and limiting those regulation to 100 pgs or less.
Make ALL laws invalid and unenforceable if they exceed in length the US Constitution.
G
The day EPA senior management and their green activist pals decided they were the lawmakers is the day they guaranteed to kiss their asses good bye .
No doubt there are thousands of honest EPA employees but when the department sold out the public interest they are in the wrong place wrong time .
The arrogant EPA management is just fortunate their act lasted this long .
The biggest swamp is the EPA . Bill H.R. 861 is more than a bill to eliminate corrupt government departments it signifies decentralized Washington based control and puts responsibility with State officials were it belongs .
What’s the delay in the appointment of Mr. Pruitt to head EPA. The Senate Committee is done. The full Senate needs to move forward. The effort to clean up EPA needs to get going. Valuable time is being wasted.
Larry, “Valuable time is being wasted”, I have the feeling that on both sides of the aisle they are busy covering their asses, therefore the delays.( as I believe is the case of most of the approvals of nominees)
I think handing over responsibility to the states is a bad idea. Take the example of manufacturing cars. Today, the manufacturers build to the toughest state regulations, which are from Califormia but followed by a number of “CARB” states. Combined, this is too big a market to ignore. If there is no EPA, what is going to stop the state regulators from being really stupid? Building and selling cars is interstate commerce and should not be regulated by state agencies.
I would scrap the EPA and replace it with a new, smaller agency that has tighter limits and a clear mandate to protect the human environment from real pollution, not keeping the planet safe from human activity.
Dan
Good point, but why can’t this be done by the (existing) Department of Transportation?
I’m inclined to believe you can’t retrain bureaucrats, especially failed zealot bureaucrats.
+ quite a few!
Auto.
I see this as part of what will keep state EPAs in check.
If California makes it impossible to build cars for a reasonable price, Californians won’t be able to buy a car at a reasonable price. How long will that last? But everyone else can still buy the car they want.
I expect they’ll just buy Teslas…
Griff as usual, you expect wrong!
Griff,
They won’t buy Teslas when there are no subsidies. Indeed expect the crash of the entire electric car industry. Like windmills all they are doing is subsidy farming. No subsidies no farmers and windmills and electric cars stop being built.
Electric cars were being built prior to the subsidies. It’s just that they were only building a few hundred per year.
Mostly only wealthy people buy Teslas now. That’s because even with the subsidies, they are still far too expensive for the average car buyer. So even without the subsidies, the rich will still buy them.
The other problem with pure electrics is that they have significantly reduced range in cold weather, which makes them less useful to all those people that live north of the frost line.
@Griff
The 2017 list price for the Tesla S 75, the lowest model, is $74,500. Care to reevaluate your position?
My bad. The bottom model is the S 60, which comes in at $68,000.
For comparison, the median price of an existing home int the US is $234,900. So, down payment on a house, or high status virtue signaling? I suppose you could try living in the Tesla…
States can only regulate economic activity that occurs in their state.
CA can’t regulate power plants, farms, and factories that exist in other states.
PS: While CA may influence cars being built elsewhere, cars in other states are NOT being built to the pollution standards enforced in CA.
My whole point is that cars *are* being built to California standards.
http://auto.howstuffworks.com/fuel-efficiency/fuel-economy/carb4.htm
The CARB state market is too big for the auto manufacturers to ignore, so they build to CA standards. People in South Carolina and Texas, etc, have to pay more for their cars because CA and the states that blindly follow are big enough to drive the market. This is clearly an example of the nutters in Los Angeles mandating what residents of Atlanta will pay.
dan no longer in CA,
“My whole point is that cars *are* being built to California standards.”
Totally agree. My wife and I bought a used (2003) Toyota 4Runner in 2008 (full disclosure, Toyotas are great). With work, camping, kid’s sports, etc. we’re well over 200,000 miles. When I took the car in for inspection last year, the “Check Engine” light was on. I got a call from the mechanic and he said it was the catalytic converters (note the plural) and that it would cost $2,500 to replace.
After my near-heart attack and regaining my breath, I asked him if it could be done cheaper, and he said no, it was designed for California standards and it could only be replaced by those parts.
Fortunately, we don’t have those regulations in VA and my car passed inspection and I’ll be damned if I’m going to pay $2,500 for a stupid catalytic converter to comply with CA standards.
@Dan
California is actually treated as a separate market. Automakers have separate lines for CA vehicles because the cost differential is high enough to justify it.
The citizens of those states should be allowed to have the laws as stupid as they want them to be.
G
HR681 may simply be a ‘shot across the bow’…. or its intent may be to sink the entire EPA garbage scow. Time will tell. If the abolition bill doesn’t pass, it may serve to soften up the opposition for a significant (50%?) reduction in funding and authority.
CO2 is not ‘pollution’. EPA should have no regulatory authority over it. CO2 is the fundamental food for all plant life, and by food chain extension, all animal life on the planet. Let’s be done with that false canard, once and for all!
The problem with CO2 being labelled a pollutant is that it was allowed to get past the gatekeepers. In Australia, the Senate is given the role of scrutinising regulations. The enabling legislation allows the departments to write the legislation & get it signed off by the Governor General. But legislation gives the Senate 30 sitting days, within which it can veto the regulations.
This acts to control and limit the excesses that individual departments can get into, because there is always that outside scrutiny. Any rewriting of the EPA legislation should have some sort of Senate scrutiny like this.
Problem with the EPA is they kept raising the bar on environmental standards without regard to the cost to benefit ratio and its overall detrimental effect on business – re. compliance costs – time, money, effort to re-engineer & comply. I have had numerous experiences with the EPA regarding process plant operation. I just wish some of these guys had some practical industrial/chemical experience in actual operating processes. In many cases I had to use BACT (Best Available Control Technology) that was not commercially proven. I agree that we need a uniform set of environmental standards & an enforcement mechanism but we can’t keep raising the bar – forcing all industry to locate off shore someplace.
I agree. They just need to have a uniform set of rational rules and regulations. I see the comment about shutting down the EPA, which doesn’t make any sense. Given modern industry drive to streamline operations the last thing we need is zero federal oversight and 50 individual agencies setting up rules that are likely to create conflicts and drive up compliance costs. What we need is for states to stop going nuts and using unsound regulations (California and Oklahoma are two extreme cases of lousy regulations causing long term harm). Sometimes I despair and wonder if adults will ever get to run things in Washington.
There are already rules that require a cost benefit analysis for new regulations.
The problem is that the EPA just makes up whatever numbers it needs to prove that it’s proposed regulations pass this test.
The only difference between Volkswagen gaming the tests and the EPA gaming the tests, is that the EPA will sue Volkswagen. Volkswagen can’t sue the EPA.
The problem with the EPA is that it exists.
Wow, that would be fabulous if it actually comes to pass.
Learn from the Democrats! They are masters of incremental “progress.” Here a little, there a little…. Pretty soon they’re way down the road on whatever is the current agenda, whereas they would get stopped cold by trying to win in one fell swoop. Incrementalism would be a wise strategy for most of the country’s hot button issues. For example, some first steps might be:
1. EPA – revisit the greenhouse gas findings. Could be done by executive order, no court necessary.
2. Healthcare – replace the present arbitrary restrictions on insurance providers with nation-wide competition.
3. Immigration – start by doing something for the 1.3 million Mexicans who have applied and are patiently waiting to enter the US legally.
We may be in a revolutionary mood, but historically, most revolutions do not result in improvement. Obamacare comes to mind….
Shouldn’t that be:
“Learn from the Democrats! The are masters of “excremental progress.”
/grin
The problem is that it is the nature of any bureaucracy to want to grow. So the Democrats incrementalism works. Any incrementalism in the other direction fights against this natural tendency.
If we take away a little bit of power today. When we come back in a year to take a little bit more away, we find that the bureaucracy has actually grown and is now bigger than it was before last years trimming.
Hit the nail squarely on the head with this one, Mark. This reminds me of some woody vines that were growing on my property. At first I cut them back, but they grew back faster than I could trim. So I cut them down right to the ground. That worked for a while, but they still grew back. Eventually I got a small backhoe and ripped everything out, roots and all. I back filled the trench with fresh soil. So far, so good, but I am keeping vigilant. If I see it starting to grow back, I’ll go Rambo on it.
I’ve found that the only way to get rid of Kudzu is tactical nukes.
Mark,
I’m afraid that might just make the mutate!
“The new EPA abolition bill is at a very early stage, and has to cross a number of hurdles before making it to the desk of President Trump.”
I’m picking they better hurry or Trump wont be the one sitting in the presidents seat. I reckon he’s got about two weeks left.
… and you know this because …. ?
We need to book mark this post, so that starting in two weeks, we can ridicule Simon with it every time he posts.
Why wait two weeks?
Every post he makes is reason to ridicule him!
TA
“Trump said today in his news conference that he was not aware of anyone in his campaign communicating with the Russians before he won the election.”
Trump also said he won by the biggest majority since Reagan!!! Trump talks BS. Work it out.
Those 2 are on different subjects, so you have not given any evidence to back up your claim. The challenge was to show where he contradicted himself from one week to the other.
If the words of the challenge are too big for you, perhaps we can use single syllable words. Until then, try to remember what you are talking about.
Simon
That’s a wild claim. What’s the basis for it?
Simon is not making a wild claim – he is exposing his wishful thinking.
Trump is one link from being gone. We now know his team were talking to the Russians before and during the election. Now gosh, why would they have been doing that? Ummm I wonder. Could it have been anything to do with them hacking Clintons emails? Maybe he was getting a recipe for vodka. No wait he doesn’t drink…..
Yuo really don’t have the first idea, do you?
About politics, about science, about anything at all, in fact.
Simon
No facts then?
Just alarmism?
The usual extreme-left modus operandi…
No, we do not know that. December was post election.
But keep swallowing the fake news.
We know nothing of the sort.
MarkW February 16, 2017 at 9:52 am
“We know nothing of the sort.”
Yes we do…..
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/14/us/politics/russia-intelligence-communications-trump.html?_r=0
No, “we” do not – http://www.dailywire.com/news/13502/pelosi-cummings-ny-times-fall-fake-flynn-tweets-joseph-curl
You can believe fake news all you want. But that still does not make it factual. All you know is that the NY Slimes reported it. However as the above (and countless others) articles show, they do not print the truth. But they do print a lot of fake news.
Simon says: “Trump is one link from being gone. We now know his team were talking to the Russians before and during the election.”
Trump said today in his news conference that he was not aware of anyone in his campaign communicating with the Russians before he won the election.
Trump also said it was Mike Flynn’s job to call the Russians and every other country on Earth as part of his job, after Trump won the election.
Great news conference. You should have seen it. Trump’s supporters are singing Trump’s praises. The MSM is acting like they think Trump is deranged. I think that has to do with Trump calling the MSM a bunch of liars. The MSM is not used to that kind of treatment. They are usually the bullies, but Trump beat them to it today.
All the MSM has is exaggerated stories, with no proof that any of what they allege, happened. That’s all you have, too, Simon.
“I’m picking they better hurry or Trump wont be the one sitting in the presidents seat. I reckon he’s got about two weeks left.”
Wishful thinking.
One has to marvel/be aghast at how the Left and the MSM have created this false reality of Russia/Trump collusion.
The MSM have become a huge propaganda machine aimed at destroying Trump. Their behavior is really getting bizarre. Fortunately, Trump can communicate directly to the people and can go around the out-of-control MSM, and they won’t be able to stop his agenda in the long run.
All this smoke from the MSM and no fire. Not one of the MSM claims to have any evidence of Trump and the Russians working together to turn the election Trump’s way, which is what the Left and the MSM are alledging, they just insinuate that this is so. They are making up false stories to undermine Trump. Their false stories are dangerous to our ability to govern ourselves and dangerous to our national security because foreigners read these lies about Trump, too.
The MSM and its Leftwing propaganda and lies are the most dangerous thing threatening the personal freedoms of all U.S. citizens. We can’t govern ourselves properly or defend ourselves properly if all we have to go on are lies and half-truths, and that’s all we are getting from the MSM and the Left.
They use the same tricks as the CACA crowd. They say that Russia “hacked” the election, implying actual interference with vote counting. Yet the only possible real intervention to which they can point is Wikileaks’ release of Democrat emails, which Assange says didn’t come from Russian but US insider sources. Even if he’s lying, that still doesn’t amount to “hacking” the election, but just an idiotically insecure email server. Podesta left the door open.
@ Gloateus Maximus
Correction. Podesta OPENED the door. When he clicked on the phishing email link.
The MSM and the left (but I repeat myself) conspire to destroy anyone who is not part of their tribe. Not just Trump.
That is a perfect description of the situation, Gloateus Maximus.
“The MSM and the left (but I repeat myself) conspire to destroy anyone who is not part of their tribe. Not just Trump.”
That’s exactly right, MarkW.
The MSM did the same kind of character assasination to all the Republican presidents to one degree or another, although the attacks on Trump, I would have to say, are unprecedented in their number and intensity.
Happily, this all seems to roll off Trump like water off a duck’s back (much to Simon and Griff’s chagrin), and he just keeps on keeping on. He’s enjoying himself. The MSM/Left hate it. They are almost beside themselves with discombobulation. 🙂
It would be funny to watch the desperate measures the MSM takes, but unfortunately the MSM are misleading and unnecessarily scaring millions of people in the U.S. and around the world with their lies about Trump. The truth is not in them. Disbelieve about 95 percent of what they say, right off the bat.
It never ceases to amaze me how delusional your average liberal is.
Simon,
I can’t wait for two weeks to go by so that I can hit you over the head with this every time you pop up. Thanks for the ammo! Makes playing wack-a-gopher so much easier.
Sometimes it’s so easy, it stops being fun.
Regardless, it remains good exercise.
Neutralizing emanations from the penumbra is only relatively drastic to something that was undeniably progressive (i.e. monotonic change). It’s time to put away scientific mysticism, selective, opportunistic, and unprincipled, and restore the scientific domain. The green propaganda exploiting the prophecy of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming was always a double-edged scalpel.
The good news continues.
Thousands of Democrats out of work.
Thousands of very good people work for the EPA however when any department goes rogue
thinking it is bigger than elected lawmakers it ceases to be of value . In fact it has morphed into
an eco bully beholding to it’s eco lobby pals and not supportive of the broader public interest .
It took decades to devolve and it’s culture is so entrenched just wind it up and reallocate any vital services to other departments that still support the USA .
“Thousands of very good people work for the EPA however when any department goes rogue thinking it is bigger than elected lawmakers it ceases to be of value .”
I guess it can be described as “going rogue” but I think the EPA was just following orders from Obama. They didn’t take any of those moves on their own. Everything they did was authorized and directed by Obama. Obama should be the one described as “going rogue”.
Obama’s only role in this fiasco was to remove the fetters and allow the EPA to do what it has been wanting to do for years.
The idea that the EPA is just some formless, mindless blob that performs the will of who ever is president is ridiculous.
The
EPA has been heading in this direction for along time.
Clinton and Bush did nothing to stop the EPA, IPCC and our response to climate change.
“Obama’s only role in this fiasco was to remove the fetters and allow the EPA to do what it has been wanting to do for years.
The idea that the EPA is just some formless, mindless blob that performs the will of who ever is president is ridiculous.”
Do you also think the IRS just took it upon themselves to target the Tea Party without orders from the top?
Abolish the EPA and send those necessary duties – real environmental issues, not CO2 BS – to the states. End federal control.
I am optimistic that some good will come from the Trump administration whether the feds get abolished or not.
Welcome relief to the humanity from the depressively misanthropic political climate, which has deteriorated to the point of resembling lebensraum. How about hasting the bill one week for implementation on 24 December 2018?
Meanwhile, prominent Republicans are pitching a carbon tax no different to the one Julia Gillard forced us to pay in Australia.
* * * * *
“The blueprint involves a $40 tax on every metric ton of carbon dioxide released by burning fossil fuels, with the price climbing over time. To avoid an undue burden on the poor from the higher energy bills that would result, the projected $200 billion to $300 billion in annual revenue would be redistributed to households in the form of quarterly checks from the Social Security Administration. Families of four would see an average annual payout of $2,000 under the plan, they say.”
* * * *
That is exactly how Gillard’s “carbon tax” worked.
Earlier in the report…
* * * * *
“The Republican and business leaders lent their stature to an approach for addressing climate change that mirrors an idea already advanced by Exxon Mobil Corp [and implemented in Australia by Julia Gillard]. Supporters say the tax is a conservative solution to climate change that replaces a regulatory regime with a free-market approach for addressing the greenhouse gas emissions.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2017-02-08/prominent-republicans-begin-push-to-tax-carbon-cut-regulations
* * * * *
Carbon tax forcing – the new “free market” conservative approach!!
Khwarizmi, not conservatives, but “One World Government” residue
in the Republican party. I think of them as Light Democrats.
“Meanwhile, prominent Republicans are pitching a carbon tax no different to the one Julia Gillard forced us to pay in Australia.”
Trump says he will not support a carbon tax. Trump also says “climate change” is mainly a “bunch of bunk” according to his spokesman, Priebus. These prominent Republicans are barking up the wrong tree.
What Trump says one week is often contradicted by what he says the next week.
“What Trump says one week is often contradicted by what he says the next week.”
I don’t know what you mean. Could you give some examples of Trump contradicting himself from one week to the next?
Zero chance of a carbon tax passing. Too many Democrats from energy-producing states. Even if by a miracle it squeaked past a GOP-led Congress, Trump would veto it.
The political acumen of this administration is amazing. The Senate is about to vote whether to confirm Trump’s nominee for the EPA any day now and the White House is briefing top EPA officials about the potential contents of a presidential order to reform the EPA. And a bill to abolish the EPA has been introduced in the House. The perfect atmosphere to make a few Republican Senators from purple or blue states who care about the environment decide they can’t trust the combination of Trump and Pruitt. You’d think these were “fake news” spread by the EPA or the liberal press in an attempt to defeat Pruitt. No, White House officials are bragging about it.
As with his immigration order, Trump’s executive order probably will end up getting overturned by the courts. I wonder if Myron Ebell or anyone else who knows something about the environment has even seen the order.
Talk is cheap; accomplishments are all that matter. Few in this administration have a record of accomplishment in government … especially the trio that run the White House: Bannon, Miller and Kushner. When I was growing up, we were told not to trust anyone over 30. Today, anyone who has succeeded in government is assumed to have been corrupted by that experience. Perhaps that is correct, but amateur hour in the White House may be worse.
Yep. We are in deep doodoo. The immigration order should have waited until he was prepared to defend it and had his team in place at DoJ. Now he is going to waste the momentum he had on climate and energy. If he doesn’t get control of this NOW he will be run out of office before his term is up. And a really good agenda will be destroyed. And the climate kooks will come out stronger not weaker.
Chances are some group will go to court and get the EO stopped. We declared victory way way too soon. The vested interests own huge pieces of our government, much of our media, and control our universities and schools. We are in deep trouble.
Actually the EO is DOA if the Supreme Court gets involved, and it appears that cooler heads have prevailed and that Trump will abandon this abomination. Of course, what he does next could very well be worse but we’ll have to wait and see.
I think you guys are underestimating Trump and overestimating the MSM leftwing propaganda and false narratives they are creating.
Anyone can file a lawsuit. You can be sure the Left will be filing lawsuit after lawsuit to try to prevent Trump from carrying out his agenda. They may slow him down, but they won’t stop him because he is acting within the law. Just because a lawsuit has been filed against you, doesn’t mean you are in the wrong. That’s for the courts to decide.
“I think you guys are underestimating Trump…”
I certainly hope so.
Scraft1: You can listen to constitutional scholars from the left and right at the link below. They agree that the Supreme Court is likely to uphold the power of the president to protect the country by regulating immigration with the authority Congress has delegated. However, Trump’s order was so poorly written that that technican aspects may not survive judicial scrutiny.
http://blog.constitutioncenter.org/2016/04/podcast-is-president-obamas-immigration-policy-against-the-law/
TA: I is hard to underestimate a man who took 5 years to realize that Obama was an American citizen and who thinks his administration has made great progress simply because he says so. And he will make great progress – on the wall, draining the swamp, destroying ISIS, creating jobs – because he will say he has. Reality is a minor inconvenience. He sat back an watched his Vice President tell what Trump (but not the VP) knew were lies about his national security advisor’s meeting with the Russian ambassador – and then complains when the truth is leaked by law enforcement personnel monitoring the ambassador. Anyone telling lies to the American people who thinks the truth won’t be leaked is nuts. Of course, the truth is what the Donald says it is, the rest is fake news.
“I is hard to underestimate a man who took 5 years to realize that Obama was an American citizen”
I assume you’re unaware that it was Hillary Clinton who started that particular rumour when she stood against him eight years ago?
I think you have a completely skewed view of Trump and the situation, Frank.
Frank wrote: “the Supreme Court is likely to uphold the power of the president to protect the country by regulating immigration with the authority Congress has delegated.”
You got that one correct.
Frank wrote: ” However, Trump’s order was so poorly written that that technican aspects may not survive judicial scrutiny.”
It was not poorly written, it was deliberately written that way and ended up inconveniencing 109 people who had Green cards. Those 109 people were processed and sent on their way within a matter of days. If the Washington Federal Judge had not interfered, that’s as far as it would have gone. Some legal experts say Trump would have been within his legal rights to ignore the Court order. But Trump doesn’t want to rock the boat, so he isn’t doing that, he will accomplish his goal another way, where the Court cannot interfere. And as was said: If it ever gets to the Supreme Court, the President will win. The law is clear. The president has the authority to refuse entry to anyone who isn’t an American citizen or other legal status. Btw, just to put things in a little perspective, legal immigration was stopped in the U.S. from about 1921 until 1965.
Frank wrote: “It is hard to underestimate a man who took 5 years to realize that Obama was an American citizen”
You may be assuming too much. Obama himself, claimed he was born in Kenya, on his book publisher’s website for years, until right before he decided to run for president. Then the website changed that wording. I could probably find a screenshot of the website, before and after the changes (kinda like climate science) if you asked real nice.
“and who thinks his administration has made great progress simply because he says so. And he will make great progress – on the wall, draining the swamp, destroying ISIS, creating jobs – because he will say he has. Reality is a minor inconvenience.”
Well, give him a couple of months, how about it. What Trump is doing may not look like progress to you, but it sure looks like progress to me. It smells like Victory! 🙂
Frank wrote: “He sat back and watched his Vice President tell what Trump (but not the VP) knew were lies about his national security advisor’s meeting with the Russian ambassador”
You couldn’t prove that if your life depended on it.
Frank wrote: “and then complains when the truth is leaked by law enforcement personnel monitoring the ambassador.”
Truth? The only truth leaked was the fact Flynn talked to the Russians. Noone is claiming Flynn did anything illegal or dishonest, other than the Left and the MSM. There is no proof of such. Flynn got in trouble because of how he mischaracterized his Russian conversations to the Vice President and then the Vice President went on national tv and repeated the mischaracterization, which made him look bad and got Flynn fired. Why Flynn mischaracterized the conversation, is unknown at this time (at least by me), but he apparently didn’t do anything illegal. At least so far, and Trump was not holding back information from Pence.
+1
Is it true that the Feds own 30% of the land that is the usa? Someone said this the other day and that Trump should sell this to pay debts and restore America to its people.
I don’t know if it’s 30 percent of not, but it’s a lot, especially in the western states.
I think Trump is looking at doing some selling, and giving back to states, and other things like that, with the excess U.S. government land, although I have heard nothing concrete one way or another.
30% sounds a little light to me. Regardless, in western states, the amount is way above that. Something like 90% of Alaska is owned by the federal government.
Did you know that the area of parks and wilderness is greater then the area of the 13 original States at the time of the Revolution? Fact ! To say that wildife is hurt by Mankinds encoachment is totally wrong when they have the lalnd area larger thanall of Georgia, South Carolina, North carolina, Virginia (including West Virginia), Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Rhode ialand, Massachusetts, (Including Maine), and New Hampshire. Only a weathy nation can afford such concern for the environment. But enough is enough,
The reality is that the climate change we have been experiencing is caused by the sun and the oceans over which Mankind has no control. There is no real evidence that CO2 has any effect on climate and plenty of scientific reasoning to support the idea that the climate sensivity of CO2 is really zero. So if the EPA cannot really do anything about it they should not be waisting tax payers dollars on it. The federal government is already deep in debt and needs to stop such wastefull spending of the tax payers money. I estimate that the money the federal government is borrowing today will end up costing the tax payers more than 12 times the amount borrowed to repay over the next 180 years. This fiscal insanity has to stop. So far the EPA has not been able to change one weather event let alone change global climate.
No, it isn’t the sun: the sun has for a while been in a less active state.
and yes, there is a great deal of evidence it is CO2 causing warming and human produced CO2 at that.
Please state what you imagine this evidence to be. There’s a Nobel Prize in it for you, since IPCC hasn’t been able to disccover any such evidence, despite trying to manufacture some.
“CO2 causes warming”? Great. Let’s debate this issue ad nauseum – like we do on this website ad nauseum.
“CO2 causes warming”? Great. Let’s debate this issue ad nauseum – like we do on this website ad nauseum.”
You know, we hardly ever debate about the possible negative feedbacks that might neutralize any warming caused by CO2.
The theory says CO2 ought to cause warming. So where is it? Why isn’t it showing up?
Because the human produced CO2 wear sparkly diamond earrings in the wintertime (when CO2 is highest) so we can distinguish these man-made molecules from the massive amount of molecules of other stuff (like nitrogen, oxygen, or water vapor) in the atmosphere? Is that how you know? Because I know of no machine that can tell the difference between a natural and a man-made CO2 molecule.
As Gloateus Maximus notes, a Nobel awaits you if you can prove this.
Yes the sun has been less active for the last cycle, and ignoring the El Nino pulse, the pause has been going on for about 20 years.
Beyond that, there’s this concept called thermal inertia. Learn a bit about it and stop making a clown of yourself.
Beyond that, I call BS on your weasel words.
You claim that CO2 is causing warming. How much? Your statement would still be true even if CO2 were only causing 5% or less of the warming over the last 150 years. (Which probably isn’t too far off the mark)
If you had any courage at all, you would specify what percentage and be prepared to defend your claim.
No there is not that evidence. The fundamental assumptions of CAGW are in error. There s inot an accelerator or positive feedback. GHGs are de minimus at most.
Skankhunt42, er, I mean Griff, you are so utterly stupid, words cannot describe the level of said stupidity.
I agree, MarkW, my estimate is also less than 5%.
Call it 0%.
Close enough ……
~3% of ~400ppm/v CAUSES warming, really?
Unfortunately, the best approach is probably to assume that you only have four years, and ask the question “What actions will take the longest to reverse, assuming an antithetical administration in four years time?”
The majorities needed in government are just not there for the root-and-branch reform of the EPA mandates. So the next best thing is probably the sledge-hammer approach to the corrupt bureaucratic edifice. That means job losses. Lots of them.
The pace and actions of Trump is breathtaking! I am impressed. If he succeeds, it may spell the doom of politicians of ever gaining the oval office. As regardless of persuasion, the voters will demand a businessman from their side be the next candidate.
And that is why every career politician on both sides are throwing roadblocks in his way. Very few have fall back skills or positions other than overpaid consultants to other career politicians. A good first step is to repeal the 17th Amendment.
Repeal of the 17th is good. But it is not going to get real people into the senate as the politicians from the states would still be picking the senate.
Pollution crosses state boundaries and leaving its regulation up to individual states is a problem. Total abolition of the EPA will just return us to the situation before its creation where upwind states don’t care about what happens downwind. I agree the EPA has long abandoned its usefulness and descended into tyrannical behavior. The one place it’s useful is for protecting those downwind from upwind abusers. The redesign of EPA should not abandon that principle.
Gary,
Form the EPA from a conference of state EPAs. With decisions requiring a certain level of consensus. Any contentious issues can then be passed to Congress for Federal arbitration. The EPA as it exists has outlived its usefulness and become instead a political enforcement body.
Seriously?
Here’s the full text of the bill:
“The Environmental Protection Agency shall terminate on December 31, 2018.”
No transfer of duties; no thought to how the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act or any other duties of the EPA will be administered. Just “terminate” it.
Source: https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/861
This is not the way to do this.
Here’s a thought for the new administration. The Federal government owns 640 million acres. If you sell off half that land you could pay down most, (if not all), of the federal deficit. This would also be a boondoggle for the western states. Currently they get no tax revenue on Federal lands. If half is converted to private land, the extra tax revenue would be huge.
IMO all federal land except for national parks, (some) military and Indian reservations should be sold and/or turned over to the states. Maybe also the highest parts of mountain ranges, above the timberline.
The West has been a colony of DC long enough.
I would let them keep the land that federal office buildings sit on. Maybe a foot or two more.
I compare the EPA to Kudzu. It was brought into the us as a plant
to control erosion, which it does, but then it went very much beyond
the original plan and is now slowly consuming the southern US.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kudzu_in_the_United_States
Kudzu can be cut back to it’s roots, but Its roots can be 25 feet
deep. Very hard to kill.
So would be any residual EPA. Bush the younger allowed
his EPA to declare CO2 a pollutant.
The Bushes are Globalist. The EPA is a political arm of Globalism.
Eliminating the EPA is just plain stupid….idiotic….moronic…ill-considered….counter-productive….etc.
Nothing wrong with a federal EPA that helps the States achieve reasonable goals to protect our natural environment, to restore it where necessary, for the use and enjoyment of the people of the United States.
It is a run-away activist EPA in collusion with eco-terrorists groups that puts its agenda ahead of the good of the nation and the people that needs to be reined in and brought under control — and illegal, unconstitutional regulations repealed, such as the waterways act.
The Inspector general or the US Attorney General needs to investigate the EPA for the long-standing practices of “sue and settle” which it has used to gain powers not granted to it under law.
Kip, I would agree with you if I thought that Patriots would always
be in charge of the US government, but the Socialists might be reelected
sometime in the future. I believe that their attempt to kill
Capitalism would be very much harder if there were no EPA.
Jerry ==> I am much more worried about the misanthropes — the anti-humanity eco-nuts — than all the other “-ists” put together.
Kip,
You don’t trim back weeds, you pull them out by the roots. And then you plant nice flowers.
My plan/idea:
Get rid of the EPA and replace it with a environmental advisory board or panel appointed by the President and approved by Congress. The panel would consist of environmentalists and scientists from various fields related to environmental protection and human health. The board would make recommendations for new environmental regulations or laws (or rolling back/eliminating existing ones) to Congress who would then decide whether to approve the recommendation. If passed, the legislation would go to the President to be signed into law. Congress would be required to have hearings on the matter and apply cost/benefit analysis to all recommendations for new laws or regulations from the board before voting on them. The hearings of course could include scientists and environmentalists from the board as well as from the private sector.
The states would enforce the federal environmental laws and regulations. An individual or group of individuals (maybe the advisory board) from the federal level would oversee and monitor the states’ enforcement of federal regulations and laws to ensure uniform compliance.
This way, the radical greenies’ political influence at what is now the EPA is greatly diminished in my opinion. It would be much harder for them to call the shots with Congress and the President deciding the matter. This process is probably going to be slower and more bureaucratic than the current process at the EPA, but that’s life in Washington.
I don’t know, but maybe there are holes in this idea and problems with it that I’m not noticing. At any rate, I welcome comments on this idea.
I think that Kip is right in this case. Small government is great, but and EPA that actually focused on legitimate pollution threats and mitigation would be useful. Such studies could be focused and narrow, regarding specific releases, toxins and how to deal with them. That would be of value.
Most enforcement should be at state level (most sources are localized and may be specific to environmental and geological factors as well as the specific technologies that are responsible for the risk), but research on mitigation strategies and effectiveness of clean-ups could be valuable to all. That said, capture of agencies by interest groups and radicals is a constant threat.
Jay Lehr founded the EPA with the best intentions, but he says that the
EPA has done nothing useful since the early ’80s.
The TVA enabling act gave the TVA three objectives-flood control, electric power
generation, and recreation. They have gone far beyond their original mandate.
All government metastasizes. Stop the cancer.
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2017/01/23/jay-h-lehr-beginning-end-epa/
If the EPA now has a gun to its head , it is because it went out an bought a gun , loaded it with bullets and taught someone who to shoot it . Then put the gun to its own head and said ‘ I dare you to tell me to pull the trigger ‘
Kip Hanson@ 8:40 AM Kip, I believe that the misanthropes, Green nuts, Socialists,
and Globalists or their Useful idiots are one and the same.
Their goal is to stop capitalism, and establish a “one world government” under
the UN.
+1
The hard left fasc1sts of the media and academia are showing their totalitarian dna by resorting the the classic Soviet era tactic to discredit political opponents – diagnosing them as mentally ill.
Here they report a “petition” by psychiatrists to remove president Trump based on mental illness, inventing a new mental illness in the process:
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-38991171
The Russian author Irina Politkovskaya revealed in her book “Putin’s Russia” the return of “political psychiatry”, the practice of using the psychiatric profession to eliminate political opponents, being revived from Soviet times.
A Nuremburg trial is coming for these BBC/CNN/hard left academia fasc1sts.
“First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, and then you win.” – Mahatma Gandhi
For President Trump it is clear his opponents are fighting him now. I predict the winning phase will begin within the next year or so. He can clearly see this progression as well, which is why he is so confident.
Thanks ptolemy2. Good to know BBC uses tax-payers hard earned cash for calling newly elected POTUS mentally ill. Right after Brexit. They must be experts of the sort.
I own a small business which is highly regulated by the EPA. We need to roll back regulation to at least 2000 if we are to survive much longer. Every week, the idiot ideologues in DC think of some way to kill our business with required testing, expensive studies (paying parasites who surround the EPA), and reports. We miss a report date and it’s a $42,500 fine for each unit sold in that quarter. That’s twice our selling price.
I wanted more engineers for product development and instead we had to hire a compliance officer. Insanity.
Help us Donald Trump, you are our only hope.
Put climate “science” and the EPA on trial. Here is the court case. This one should be open and shut. The fr@ud is monumental.
Climate “Science” on Trial; The Smoking Gun Files
https://co2islife.wordpress.com/2017/01/17/climate-science-on-trial-the-smoking-gun-files/
Once again, co2islife, thank you so very much for the fantastic collection of work that destroys the “warmists” agenda. Very well done!!!
Can’t thank you enough for those comments.
“The new EPA abolition bill is at a very early stage, and has to cross a number of hurdles before making it to the desk of President Trump. But returning power and responsibility for clean air and water to the states, reducing federal interference in everyday affairs, is likely to be a very attractive proposition for ”
accepting the real world and find our place in.
And today, Friday:
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_SENATE_TRUMP_CABINET?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2017-02-17-13-36-14
A lot of commenters here don’t seem to realize that the vast majority of enforcement functions are already done by the state environmental agencies. Each state has written regulations and guidance for its citizens to be in compliance with federal laws – Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, RCRA, etc. Each state has its own permitting programs and cleanup criteria. Michigan’s criteria tables, for example, are much more restrictive and comprehensive than those in Illinois. I’ve been working in the environmental consulting industry for 16 years, and I’ve never interacted directly with the USEPA. I know they’ve had representatives involved in some of our projects, and the company occasionally contracts directly with one of the regions for specific jobs. However, air and water discharge permit applications and compliance reports go to the state agency, and it’s the state that approves remediation plans and decides if and when a site can be closed.
Mostly, the USEPA personnel write new regulations, do some research, distribute federal funds, and write periodic reports. They don’t need to be as large as they currently are to perform those functions. The federal laws won’t go away if the EPA is disbanded or reduced to an oversight committee. The states will still need to make sure their regulations and enforcement comply with those laws.