The first couple of days of the new Trump administration have seen the President sign a blizzard of Executive Orders. These provide more material than a humble solo blogger like myself can ever comment on comprehensively. So I’ll just have to start with one particular item that I am deeply familiar with: the EPA’s so-called Endangerment Finding of December 2009.
I have seen differing counts of the number of Trump’s first-day EOs. ABC News here counts 42. One of the most consequential has the title “Unleashing American Energy.” There is a large amount of important material in this EO. In overall summary, it directs the reversal of all of the Biden administration efforts to restrict and suppress the production and development of America’s energy resources. But one provision, I would argue, is important above all the rest. That is Section 6(f), which directs a reconsideration of the so-called Endangerment Finding (EF) of December 2009. That provision of the EO reads as follows:
(f) Within 30 days of the date of this order, the Administrator of the EPA, in collaboration with the heads of any other relevant agencies, shall submit joint recommendations to the Director of OMB on the legality and continuing applicability of the Administrator’s findings, “Endangerment and Cause or Contribute Findings for Greenhouse Gases Under Section 202(a) of the Clean Air Act,” Final Rule, 74 FR 66496 (December 15, 2009).
This provision is of overriding importance because, as long as the Endangerment Finding remains on the books, it gives a license to the courts, and to activist left-wing judges anywhere in the federal system, to enjoin and undo all the other de-regulatory efforts of this and other energy-related EOs. However, if the EF is rescinded with a well-reasoned and well-supported basis, then all the other energy-related initiatives will have a far clearer path to success.
Background on the EF will help readers to understand its significance. Back in the early 2000s, as the climate scare was cranking up, activists got the idea of trying to get the courts to compel EPA to regulate (and suppress) fossil fuels through getting CO2 declared a “pollutant” under the Clean Air Act. A group of states, led by Massachusetts and New York, petitioned EPA to declare CO2 a “pollutant,” which would then give EPA the ability, and arguably even the obligation, to regulate CO2. Since CO2 is an inherent product of fossil fuel combustion, “regulation” of CO2 emissions could include anything up to and including banning fossil fuel combustion entirely if EPA so decided. Such a ban would outlaw 80+% of the current U.S. energy system.
Those opposing this gambit responded that the Clean Air Act was never intended to deal with CO2, which is colorless and odorless and non-toxic and is an inherent product of the large majority of energy production and consumption. But the language of the Clean Air Act, passed in 1970, was of course vague enough to give an opening. Here is the relevant language of Section 202(a)(1) of the Clean Air Act as it existed at the time the Massachusetts/New York case made it to the Supreme Court:
“The [EPA] Administrator shall by regulation prescribe . . . standards applicable to the emission of any air pollutant from any class or classes of new motor vehicles or new motor vehicle engines, which in his judgment cause, or contribute to, air pollution which may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare … .”
Other similar provisions gave the EPA Administrator comparable authority to regulate “pollutants” from sources other than motor vehicles.
So the statute defines “pollutant” to mean anything that, in the “judgment” of the EPA Administrator, “may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare.” During the administration of George W. Bush, despite the states’ petition, EPA declined to make such a finding as to CO2. So Massachusetts, New York, and co-plaintiffs sued to try to compel EPA to make that finding. In 2007, that case reached the Supreme Court. Here is the Court’s Opinion, issued under the caption Massachusetts v. EPA. In summary, the Court ordered EPA to make a determination whether CO2 was or was not a “pollutant,” in the sense of constituting a “danger to public health or welfare.”
To its shame, the GW Bush people punted this determination over to the Obama administration, which then took office in 2009. The Obama people got right to work, and to no one’s surprise, issued a long regulatory document in December 2009 finding that CO2 did indeed pose a danger to human health and welfare, and thus was a “pollutant” subject to regulation under the Clean Air Act. This is the document known as the Endangerment Finding, that is referenced and cited in Trump’s EO.
The EF then gave the Obamanauts license to go wild regulating CO2. As one extreme example, the Obama people promulgated what they called the Clean Power Plan, which, by ratcheting down allowable CO2 emissions over time, would have forced the closure of essentially all fossil fuel power plants.
That is where things stood when the Trump 1.0 administration took office in January 2017. I and many others were hopeful that the new administration would roll back many of the destructive anti-energy policies of the Obama people, but at the same time we were wary that any de-regulatory initiatives would get blocked by the courts, using the EF as the basis. After all, if EPA had found CO2 to be a danger to human health and welfare, then how could it fail to take efforts to restrict emissions?
As Trump took office in 2017, it was unclear to us whether the new President or his people had any concept of the drastic significance of the EF. And thus, a group known as the Concerned Household Electricity Consumers Council (CHECC) was formed to petition EPA to rescind the EF. That entity filed a Petition to EPA on January 20, 2017 — the first day of the Trump 1.0 administration. I acted as one of the lawyers for CHECC. Fundamentally, the idea was to bring this issue to the attention of the new Trump EPA and make sure that they paid attention to it. We also presented compelling scientific evidence as to why the idea that CO2 was a “danger” was preposterous.
Somewhat to our surprise, our Petition was then completely ignored. Over the course of four years, we continually tried to get information as to what was going on (with little success), and also filed seven supplements to our Petition, each bringing to bear new scientific articles or evidence making clear that CO2 was not at all a “danger” to human health and welfare. But through the entirety of Trump 1.0, there was no action on this issue. On January 19, 2021 — that is, one day before leaving office — the Trump EPA denied our Petition with a one-paragraph summary dismissal. The incoming Biden administration then took another year and three months and came out with a much longer and more devious denial of our Petition in April 2022.
Many readers here are undoubtedly familiar with the saga of our efforts after that denial. We could have just given up, but we had the idea that if we saw this through the D.C. Circuit and the Supreme Court, we might get a decision compelling a reconsideration of the EF just in time for a new Trump administration to take office. With such a decision, the Trump people could no longer ignore this issue, and would be forced to look at it. However, our efforts were unsuccessful in both the D.C. Circuit and Supreme Court. Our petition for review to the U.S. Supreme Court was denied on December 11, 2023. For those interested, here is a link to the court dockets of the D.C. Circuit and Supreme Court for these cases.
During the months since the recent election, I have been involved in many discussions about whether a new petition process should be started to try to get the EF rescinded this time around. And now suddenly,, upon entering office, Trump 2.0 immediately is taking on the Endangerment Finding, without any new petition getting filed at all. Hallelujah! Somebody over there must finally understand the importance of this. Maybe even the Donald himself! I would like to think that our previous efforts had something to do with educating Trump and his people, although I have no way of knowing that.
The job of rescinding the EF does not have to be difficult. The EF itself is totally full of holes. All EPA has to do to make for a bullet-proof rescission is to cite some dozens of scientific papers in the fifteen years since the EF that collect evidence contradicting the hypothesis of catastrophic CO2-caused warming. Lots of very knowledgeable people stand ready to help, including the members of the CO2 Coalition, which is a collection of eminent scientists that consider the EF to be thoroughly flawed.
I don’t mean to be overly optimistic, but I’ll make this prediction: If the EF is rescinded with a well-reasoned regulatory action, the courts will have little to no ability to stop the Trump roll-back of all the Obama/Biden restrictions on fossil fuels and energy transition. And after four years in which essentially all of those restrictions have been undone, and in which the EPA has been swept clean of climate activists, the ability of the government ever again to try to force an unwanted energy transition will be gone for good.
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Gone for good, dream on! What has been undone can be redone. The last thing any bureaucrat wants is to solve the problem which keeps him employed. If someone else solves it for him, his career and prestige depend on unsolving it.
Need to eliminate the EPA…
Need to eliminate the Clean Air Act…
No – we do need Federal regulation of air pollution. The problem is not that we regulate air pollution, the problem is that CO2 is not air pollution.
I remember very well how dirty and unhealthy the air was five decades ago before the CAA. We most definitely do NOT want to return to that.
Nope, the EPA is unnecessary. Here is my standard answer as to why.
If pollution is harmful, then it is measurable and traceable back to its source, and victims should be able to prosecute as for any other corporate harm. To turn that around, if pollution is not measurable and traceable back to its source, then it is not harmful.
Most people think that’s a joke, an extreme libertarian individual anarchist position. But it scared governments and corrupt cronies enough that they made it illegal.
A book on the history of New York City oysters, details of which I have forgotten but may be “The Big Oyster” by Mark Kulansky, tells of New York City sniffer squads, from the 1800s into the 1900s, tracking down pollution sources and analyzing evidence such as soot on clothes drying outside to show who to sue. This individual responsibility began to be outlawed by courts and legislatures on the grounds it did not take the public good into account; it was up to the government to decide how much pollution the nation could tolerate, and woe betide any individual who thought otherwise (Supreme Court of Georgia, Holman v Athens Empire Laundry Co., 1919: “The pollution of the air, so far as reasonably necessary to the enjoyment of life and indispensable to the progress of society, is not actionable”).
Scarecrow, as someone who has practiced in this area for years, I can tell you my experience is that a national program for dealing with air pollution is greatly preferable to thousands of state and local jurisdictions dealing with air pollution in widely varying ways, under inconsistent and often vague nuisance statutes and ordinances. The latter would be a plaintiffs lawyer’s dream, and impose far more costs on society.
What did I write that makes you think I advocated every little rinky dink jurisdiction with its own regulations?
I said VICTIM prosecutions, just as with any other corporate malfeasance. I showed an example of VICTIM prosecution. I showed an example of the Georgia Supreme Court replacing VICTIM prosecution with government control and non-prosecution.
Agree. Plus – there will always be some town happy to accept (for today) mercury in their water for good paying jobs.
Federal regulation is the only way to provide consistent, defensible, fair and equitable control of harmful pollution. I don’t know of anyone who is not a trial lawyer who believes fair justice can ever be delivered by ignorant non-technically trained juries and slick lawyers.
Regulation itself needs to be regulated. That is the very basis of the US Constitution – a system of checks and balances policed by the three competing branches of government. To keep it honest and fair. Eliminating regulation altogether simply results in a dog-eat-dog situation where the powerless are abused by the powerful.
“- we need Federal regulation of air pollution.” and “We need the CAA” are two very different statements.
So how about this.
1) Repeal the CAA.
2) Replace it with legislation explicitly regulating known harmful pollutants (lead for example is drop dead obvious).
3) Add additional legislation that forms the ‘EAA’ – the ‘Environment Advisory Agency’ whose role is to study the potential for ‘pollutants’ and only PROPOSE legislation to regulate them. It has no power to pass regulation. If something is so drop dead obvious as being harmful that it must be regulated it should be drop dead simple to find the evidence and propose legislation that the ELECTED representatives of a country are ‘hind bound’ to support because it protects the people that voted for them.
Perhaps this is an overly broad statement but there should be no agency created made up of entirely un-elected bureaucrats that has the unilateral power to pass laws (e.g. ‘regulations’) that can have serious negative affects on society. There should certainly never be an agency with the power to define why it exists.
“We’re from the government and we’re here to help.” is the single scariest sentence in the English language.
No we don’t Duane.
The worst thing in government is a portion of government given a vague goal.
e.g., ‘Pollution’ is a vague goal.
Enter the bureaucrat.
Never anxious to solve and totally succeed with their assignment, they are always seeking to expand their bureaucracy, and therefore their responsibilities.
1) A larger bureaucracy means greater stature for the people in charge.
i) Greater stature for the leader likely means greater stature for the underlings.
ii) Greater statue means higher levels of pay and recognition.
2) A vague goal means they will never be finished!
i) finishing one goal immediately results in identifying another goal.
a) e.g., pollution larger than 25 microns, soon becomes pollution greater than 20 microns, and so on.
Eventually the agency decides that they need to regulate sub 2.5 micron particles.
Though they wasted money and endangered test subjects without ever identifying a real danger.
Enter the pseudo danger, statistically apply asthma ratios to sub 2.5 micron particulate matter.
Many of the government goals are silly. e.g., clean air or water that is cleaner than what flows in a pristine stream or in the air where an exhaust is flowing…
The EPA and the Clean Air Act when first implemented had a very necessary mission.
Like so much in the Federal government, that mission was accomplished, but the agency remained and to justify their paychecks that had to find or make work.
A lot of what transpired in the following decades was bogus make work, including HFC caused Ozone Hole and now CO2 causing (false) catastrophic climate change.
Zero threshold limits are not based on biology, but were defined to keep the EPA agency in existence.
Shut down the EPA. Appropriately edit the Clean Air act. If a new problem arises, and problems do arise, then put in place the means to deal with it. Continuing the EPA until a future problem occurs is just a waste of my (and everyone else’s) tax dollars.
The EPA is necessary to enforce any environmental law. The American people would never allow air and water pollution and hazardous waste and so on allowed in this nation. The problem is that EPA went far beyond its legislative authorization in regulating climate change.
This is not true. The EPA is not necessary. It only exists because governments and corrupt cronies are scared to death of people — victims of pollution — prosecuting on their own.
See my comment just above.
That’s ridiculous. You are simply advocating for anarchy.
It is the nature of any regulatory agency to go far beyond its legislative authority.
State level agencies can handle the problem and are much easier to control.
Indeed. One very significant aspect that Francis Menton mentions is that the legislation in question is sufficiently vague to allow for creative interpretation. Call me cynical, but I suspect such imprecision is by design. The members of Congress, with due diligence regarding their continued employment, do not want to be responsible for specifics and generally defer that risk to the unelected bureaucracy. State and local governments can generally be relied upon to focus more specifically since they are more directly responsible to the people they represent and, at least in places like here in Utah, the legislative position is not a career focus. Limiting the authority of the vast bureaucracy can only have positive outcomes.
State level agencies like the California EPA?
The problem is that the USEPA was high jacked decades ago to enact regulations the watermelon-type environmentalist wanted that were NOT backed up by real science and study.
The USEPA was weaponized
How do we de-weaponize it?
Regulations need to pass Congress and the science behind any new proposed regulations needs to be double and triple checked by those with nothing gain, politically or financially.
(As I recall from Trump’s first term, there was a group of EPA advisers when he took office. His EPA choice made it a requirement that no one whose grant depended on the the advise could serve on that group.)
Reexamining the “Endangerment Finding” is a good start.
You mean like the California regulators?
The regulators need regulating. Our founders discovered first hand that a weak national government simply does not work. That’s why they wrote and ratified our Constitution, which has worked great for 238 years. The best government man has ever devised.
Sorry, but the EPA is no longer necessary. Every state now has its own environment agency or department which oversees the implementation of the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, other federal laws, and additional state regulations. For decades now, the EPA has been an agency in search of a mission. What little work is left for them to do can better be done by a scientific advisory board that convenes a couple of times per year.
Then you must be extremely happy with the California regulators who are busy banning internal combustion vehicles.
The only means Trump has of defeating their plot is to revoke, via EPA, their authority to do that. And all those states attempting to impose their warmunist policies on the rest of the nation – the only way to defeat that is a strong EPA operating under Trump’s polices.
You guys are not thinking this through. We live in the real world, not the world you wish where all your policy preferences are simple to impose and there is never any blowback or countermoves the other side can and will use to defeat you.
And reinstate Red team Blue team research to the EPA replacement and then to all science.
Not under President Vance for 8 years then President DeSantis for 8 years. By then the public will forget about “the climate emergency”.
They will come up with a new hobgoblin. Such is the nature of authority.
UN has declared IA an existential threat. So it begins again.
It is true that anything Trump orders now can be reversed if/when a warmunist Dem comes to power after he leave office. We’ve already seen that with all the flip-flopping from Obama to Trump to Biden and back to Trump.
But there are near-permanent fixes as I describe elsewhere in this thread:
2 and 3 also assume no Democrat majority ever overrides the previous GOP majority-passed legislation.
Indeed, but if the machine can be halted, or even slowed, for long enough the slow creep of reality may catch up with the juggernaut and derail it for good.
Yes – what happens when the other side wins. USA has been about 50-50 for 20 years.
Personal opinion.
Better shot at it now for the same basic reason (different legal logic) as birthright citizenship. Fundamentals called into question.
I fail to see what’s wrong with the birthright citizenship.
It’s a major incentive to illegal migration.
It is an incentive, but it is not a MAJOR incentive.
The Supreme Court has adjudicated birthright citizenship multiple times.
What Trump has done is clearly define “under jurisdiction of” in the context.
If one reads the dissenting opinions on some of the cases, one finds specific points are addressed that are legitimate but ignored.
If, for example, one applies the residency standard discussed in the Supreme Court rulings, one eliminates a pregnant woman sneaking across the border to have a baby born that then gets citizenship and tax payer support.
The Trump EO does not affect anyone who came to the US legally through the INA process, and is not retro-active.
Does no one bother to research the intent of the 14th Amendment?
1866 Sen Howard, MI
“This [amendment] will not, of course, include persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers accredited to the Government of the United States, but will include every other class of persons.”
Author of the 14th Amendment
It was never intended to apply to ‘foreigners’ or ‘aliens’ when the Amendment was passed. I fully hope and expect the present Supreme Court to stay true with the original intent of the Amendment when a challenge reaches the SCotUS (which it will).
That may have been what Senator Howard wanted, but it was NOT how the citizenship clause was written. It excluded children born to invading armies, diplomats, and Native Americans belonging to tribes that were treated as sovereign nations sharing territory with the USA but not under our jurisdiction. That last category has gone away – and was never treated consistently under the laws. (That is, if we can arrest an Indian who comes into town and gets drunk – or anyone for any crime – he is under our jurisdiction.)
Living in the UK, where ecolunacy is mandatory for all government officials, I can only dream of a Trump clone cleaning out our Augean Stable of greenie acolytes and restoring economic prosperity.
The electricity costs in the UK, Germany and Australia clearly demonstrate the insanity of greenie energy policies, but still they insist on digging an ever-deeper hole.
Ed Miliband says he won’t resign over Heathrow expansion – ‘don’t be ridiculous’. – Mirror
Damn.
Boris’s idea to replace Heathrow was the best yet (to build the replacement for Heathrow in the English Channel) – especially since the birds (that supposedly had to be saved and so stymied the idea then chose to fly elsewhere of their own volition….
but… but… the wind and sunshine is free! /s
So are coal, gas, and oil. Thei cost for all of them comes from getting them to the user in a form he can immediately use. When you include that, useful solar and wind power become the most expensive.
One can always Dream On.
https://rumble.com/v6ag44g-the-new-eco-law-ready-to-take-away-your-freedom-the-climate-and-nature-bill.html?e9s=src_v1_upp
You need to be contacting Chris Wright! I have no doubt he understands exactly what the Endangerment Finding means and the need to revoke it.
I think the reason Trump 1.0 did not take on the Endangerment Finding and Human-caused Climate Change in general, is because they felt taking on this controversial subject (controversial because the radical left has control of the news media, who make it controversial), they wanted to wait until after the 2020 election to do this, when it would not potentially hurt them politically in the race for a second term.
Trump 2.0 is now here, delayed four years, and Trump is now taking on the climate change issue with vigor.
Trump said in an interview on Fox News yesterday that he hated windmills and solar and wanted to do away with all of it. He was very serious in his condemnation of windmills and solar.
Trump also said, in connection with the announcement of $500 billion being invested in U.S. Artificial Intelligence Data Centers, that the builders of these Data Centers were going to build their own private power plants to run these Data Centers, so as not to put pressure on the Public Electrical Grid, and to guarantee operations in case of a Public Grid blackout, and Trump suggested that these private power plants could supplement the Public Grid at certain times if they have extra electricity.
Trump said that with his declaring an Energy Emergency, this gave him the ability to waive a lot of restrictions that would delay the construction of these private power plants, and Trump wants them up and running as soon as possible, and he specifically promoted coal-fired power plants saying the U.S. has plenty of coal and coal-fired power plants are very reliable when it comes to extreme weather events. He says gas-fired power plants can have their gas cut off for various reasons, whereas coal-fired power plants can store the coal they will burn right on the coal plant’s property, so do not have a supply problem.
Trump 1.0 was new to DC. And there were more RINOs in the House and Senate that fought him then than there are now. (i.e. Liz Cheney)
Trump 2.0 has learned a few things from Trump 1.0.
I was a very early member of this site and I think, at least in part, it was the material here that turned me from being an alarmist to a ‘denier’. Being somewhat homebound and acquiring an interest in gaming I purchased my first computer in 1995 – about 5 years after being introduced to AGW during my senior year at university. Through 2002 I was definitely an alarmist. In the intervening 23 years, my mission as a ‘keyboard warrior’ has been to identify ‘climate change’ for the hoax that it is. A mission I became convinced would be a failure. For the first time, there is light at the end of the tunnel after Trump withdrew from the Paris Climate Accord and called climate change a scam at Davos yesterday. Not a huge fan of McCartney but love his song ‘Great Day’ and that’s where I find myself, and I suspect this community, today. It’s still dark outside but the sun is shining so bright its burning my eyes.
The burden of self-loathing that the scammers have loaded onto average voters is being lifted by Trump’s work ethic and conviction. He obviously values Susie Wiles and I wonder if she has been instrumental in aligning the ducks and arming Trump to take such rapid fire action against the scam.
Francis is right here. Establishing CO2 as a pollutant is a sinful attack on all living things. The crazy idea that minute concentration of a non condensing gas could materially alter Earth’s radiation balance is unbridled madness. Particularly given that we know it has been much higher and the abundant plant life that formed the coal we now burn consumed the CO2 to barely survival level.
“The burden of self-loathing…”
Yes, in common with the promotion of false guilt and all the rest of the DEI nonsense.
“Establishing CO2 as a pollutant is a sinful attack on all living things.”
Well said.
We are the carbon (human lifeforms based on such) that they want to remove.
Keep up the good work
But that song is mediocre at best
McCartney has a huge number of good songs.
These are three “happy” songs I’m sure Lennon was not a co-author:
Paul and Linda McCartney – Heart Of The Country
Paul McCartney – I Will – YouTube
‘Silly Love Songs’ (from ‘Rockshow’) – Paul McCartney And Wings
I too am heartened by this EO’s explicit direction about the Endangerment Finding. During 2009 I remember one of the Senators from my state of NY, Chuck Shumer, objecting to Obama’s threat to go the EPA regulation route to pressure Congress to enact a cap-and-trade scheme or a carbon tax. The Congress, under Democrat control, declined. So now we have to undo the absurd “finding” which was based on unsound claims to begin with. Good for Trump 2.0.
By the way, I think those Chuck Shumer comments that I remember have been thoroughly “disappeared” from the internet.
Oh, and before I forget – skeptics of climate alarm, including the CO2 Coalition, should stop conceding the core claim that incremental CO2 should be expected to result in at least “some” accumulation of energy as sensible heat down here. No one knows that. The clever but ill-posed “forcing” + “feedback” framing of this issue has led to circular analysis all along.
If someone adds a bucket of water to a swimming pool while a dozen kids are splashing around in it, it should raise the water level, but nobody is able to measure the increase. Therefore, we should stop saying that adding water to a swimming pool causes the water level to rise.
The pool has an overflow port, and the water level is already there.
How much water are the kids splashing out of the pool? How much water is being lost through evaporation? How much water is lost through leaks? How much water is overflowing the pool? Unless you can determine all the ‘sinks’ you have no idea if that bucket of water is raising the water level or not. At best, all you can say is the level is higher than it would be otherwise, but not necessarily higher than originally.
One of the most powerful tools Internet has that print media did not is the power to delete history.
I recall a post here many years ago that spoke of the effect of CO2 on our climate by making an analogy with the action of gravity on a hammer vs a feather in the laboratory. In “all things being equal” conditions, the hammer and the feather fall at the same rate (in a vacuum).
Try that in your backyard. The feather will probably end up in a tree.
Great analogy, IMO.
My fear is that most of the people in the EPA like the Endangerment Finding and will leave any evidence against it out of their report.
Like the 51 former intelligence officials, the N number of people in the EPA that like the endangerment finding will have their reputations ruined. EPA head nominee Lee Zeldin isn’t likely to be friendly to AGW acolytes.
Elections put someone in charge of departments for 2-6 tears and those departments are run by 30+ year employees.
Lee Zeldin is firmly anti-windmill. He doesn’t want any new windmill farms approved.
I disagree with this writer. The endangerment finding is not the end all and be all that undercuts SCOTUS from determining that the finding is illegal. The Clean Air Act 1990 amendments do not authorize any regulation of “climate” or regulation of CO2 – which is NOT a pollutant, we all know that despite the warmunist propaganda. Therefore the long term solution is to take the EPA to court and using the rejection of the Chevron doctrine, the current SCOTUS will overturn and terminate EPA’s entire CO2 regulatory scheme as lacking legislative authorization.
In the meantime, the short term solution is for the Trump admin to immediately terminate the endangerment finding. The warmunists and their friends in states like California will of course sue, and that will put it in the courts for the long term fix. SCOTUS will not approve an injunction forcing the Trump admin to continue with the endangerment finding as it has been, pending final adjudication.
Additionally, Congress has a key role to play in two areas:
Amend the CAA to explicitly exempt climate change regulation and prohibit any attempts to do so by the current and any future administrations. This is the ultimate coup’d grace for warmunism.Amend the Administrative Procedures Act to provide authority of Congress to reject any Federal regulation without possibility of a Presidential veto (Presidents can only veto legislation, not Congressional authority over rule making), unlike the present language of APA.
These actions by Congress would nullify any attempts by a future warmunist administration to reimpose climate regulation by EPA.
“The endangerment finding is not the end all and be all…”
Good point.
“Amend the CAA to explicitly exempt climate change regulation…”
Agreed. This is important. The class of harm – “warming” – invented for the Endangerment Finding should be explicitly excluded from any authority to regulate.
One point: Some I have talked to that are somewhat knowledgeable claim Massachusetts vs.
EPA requires the regulation of CO2. As Mr. Menton pointed out, it allows such regulation if EPA determines it is a “pollutant.” It does not require the regulation!
Until that gets through Congress, use the “sue and settle” tactic that leftists have so often abused. That is, have someone sue both to overturn both the endangerment finding and to forbid the EPA from stretching its regulatory authority beyond the extents of the original legislation, have the new Trump appointee heading the agency hire the lawyers to respond, have the lawyers “settle” on the desired language, and have the new head approve that settlement.
Then fire every EPA employee that does not fall in line with the new court-mandated regulations for insubordination and contempt of court. I wouldn’t mind if the process for hiring replacements stretches into the 2030’s…
This article suffers from the expected Republican excitement of Trump taking office. And wishful thinking.
A casual reader might get the impression that on day one Trump signed perhaps 50 executive orders that completely reversed all the Biden policies Republicans did not like. If that was true, Trump would be a dictator, completely overriding Congress and courts. That did not happen.
In fact, the “science: argument has gotten much worse for reversing the endangerment finding since 2009. The author thinks the opposite. That is NOT reality.
There are FAR MORE “scientific” studies claiming rising CO2 is dangerous.
Looking at 10 year period averages: The global average temperature for 10 year periods keeps rising. The 2014 to 2024 from conservative UAH satellite data reflects the latest 10 year warming (+0.4 degrees C.) that is MORE than double the IPCC long term prediction based on an average of climate models (under 0.2 degrees C. per decade for the next 168 years, assuming CO2 doubles at the current rise rate of +2.5ppm a year)
Even worse:
2024 was the warmest year since 1979 in UAH satellite record, by far
Honest Climate Science and Energy: 2024 was the warmest year in the post-1979 UAH satellite record, by far
Add the usual bad weather used for climate change scaremongering by the media:
(1) The 2024 North Carolina hurricane floods,
(2) Two major Florida hurricanes a record low 13 days apart. The prior record was 43 days between hurricanes King and Easy in 1950.
(3) The LA wildfires. Another one started near LA two days ago
I could argue until the cows come home that much of climate science is wild guess predictions of global warming doom. And weather is not climate. That will not change many climate religion minds.
Never forget that the coming climate crisis is just a prediction NOT based on facts, data and logic. It is a belief based on faith. Beliefs based on faith can not be refuted with contrary facts, data and logic. That would be like trying to convince a religious person there is no god.
Conservative friend of the court appeals fail by trying to make a “my science is better than your science” argument. Even though the subject is NOT science. The subject is 100 year predictions of the climate with NO data. Science requires data. There are no data for the future climate. And there are no data for CAGW because CAGW has never happened. No data = No science.
The right approach:
Climate change is a consensus prediction of doom. Climate astrology, not climate science. The scientists making those predictions have been 100% wrong for the past 50 years. They are fools. If we take them seriously, then we are fools too.
The latest IPCC report says climate change is “widespread, rapid, and intensifying,” and there is “very high confidence” that the risks and adverse impacts of climate change will escalate without major emission reductions. That’s stronger than any prior conclusion.
How can you refute that? Wait 50 to 75 years to collect contrary data?
Even worse:
Congress amended the Clean Air Act in 2022 to state expressly that the six greenhouse gases are “air pollutants,” thereby adopting the Massachusetts holding into statute.
Can you imagine writing a rational decision, supported by a record, that refutes the mountain of “evidence”? Any attempt to do so will surely be struck down as arbitrary by the D.C. Circuit (the only lower court where the decision can be challenged). And even though the Supreme Court is more conservative than before, it will not likely come to their rescue. It is unlikely to revisit Massachusetts now that Congress has expressly put its holding into the Clean Air Act. And it is unlikely to stretch its public credibility by contradicting the scientific consensus and announcing that climate change is harmless.
There is no climate emergency and CO2 is not a pollutant or the earth’s thermostat. It is the basic building block for almost all life on this planet and more CO2 is better for the planet.
Really wish you had not prefaced your post as you did.
Big turn off and people will not read and grok the several valid points you made.
“Looking at 10 year period averages“
I should have typed
“Looking at 10 year periods”
Thanks for catching the error
I will assume you agree with everything else I wrote ha ha
Climate change is a consensus prediction of doom. Climate astrology, not climate science. The scientists making those predictions have been 100% wrong for the past 50 years. They are fools. If we take them seriously, then we are fools too.
Please re-read this paragraph before giving thumbs-down.
2022’s Inflation Reduction Act makes the 2009 Endangerment Finding unnecessary as a basis for carbon regulation, because the Congress has directly stated that carbon dioxide is a pollutant.
See my analysis here:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2025/01/23/the-endangerment-finding-it-looks-like-trump-2-0-will-be-much-more-fun-than-trump-1-0/#comment-4028299
What Trump’s Executive Order actually does is to set the stage for the difficult legal and legislative battles which lie ahead in fighting the scourge of carbon emission regulation.
The Trump EO takes a necessary first step by enabling a process for questioning the scientific basis for carbon regulation — which is also the logical first step for justifying repeal of the 2022 IRA.
Let’s be certain about one thing: Unless and until the 2022 IRA legislation is repealed, the EPA is explicitly directed by Congress to regulate carbon emissions as pollutants.
An important fact: No Republican voted for the Inflation Reduction Act. Not one.
I am loving Trump 2.0
I wake up get a coffee and read about which green, lefty or woke group he has upset this morning. It’s like a gift that keeps on giving.
Possibly setting a USA record for highest percentage of coverage for longest duration. News coverage has been continuous since late 2014.
All they would need to do is accept my greenhouse warming falsification science. Based on basic physics, this scientific analysis clearly shows why increases in CO2 above the saturation levels cannot cause warming.
Once this is realized, it eliminates the basis for the endangerment finding.
Point 1: If CO2 is a pollutant, then why are 8 billion people NOT on trial for pollution? Add to that the need to eliminate every animal and plant on the planet to control the CO2 “pollution” to a zero threshold level.
Point 2: The preponderance of the evidence concocted by the climate syndicate is not up to the evidentiary standard of beyond reasonable doubt.
Point 3: Air pollution (real pollution) falls within the Constitutional Amendment granting Congress the power to regulate interstate commerce. However, it does not grant Congress the authority to enact many of the green nonsense in the falsely named Inflation Reduction Act.
Point 4: There are no provisions in the Constitution that mandate retaining operation of a government agency in perpetuity. EPA can be shut down if it has served its purpose. IMHO it has.
Point 5: The Clean Air Act has been updated before and can be updated again. The point being there are reasonable and legitimate reasons to limit certain chemicals in the air. CO2 is not one of them, nor is methane nor any and all of the other misnamed greenhouse gases. I think adding H2 as a dangerous pollution has sufficient merit to be included for consideration.
The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 gives explicit authority to the EPA to regulate CO2 as a pollutant. As a document, the 2009 Endangerment Finding is no longer the most important player in the upcoming legal battles over the EPA’s regulation of carbon dioxide.
Sure, the finding isn’t a product of honestly-pursued science. But it does not matter at this point. Through passage of the IRA, carbon dioxide is a pollutant because the US Congress says it is a pollutant.
The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022:
The IRA of 2022 is a finely crafted law written and structured in a way which bypasses the older ‘criteria pollutant’ approach to enabling strict carbon regulation. The older approach requires an EPA Endangerment Finding, followed by a National Ambient Air Quality Standard (NAAQS), followed by the development of a broad-scope regulatory framework for the proposed criteria pollutant.
2009’s Endangerment Finding was published in the context of a criteria pollutant carbon regulation strategy. Had that strategy been driven to its logical conclusion, the endangerment finding should have been followed by a NAAQS determination in the 2012-2013 timeframe, and then by a broad-scope anti-carbon regulatory framework in the 2014-2015 timeframe.
That strategy was never driven to completion, for two reasons. (1) The NAAQS process would have to acknowledge that carbon dioxide is a well-mixed gas on a worldwide scale and that US emissions are the smaller component of total worldwide carbon emissions; (2) the powerful broad-scope regulatory framework enabled by the strategy would have quickly caused significant economic and lifestyle disruptions, with severe political blowback as a result.
The 2013 Clean Power Plan was pushed instead, a plan designed to fail in the courts but which keeps lawyers busy and is good virtue signal pandering to the environmentally conscious political community. Trump is elected in 2016 and the CPP is history.
Along comes Joe Biden as InstaPOTUS 2021. He hires a savvy crew of environmental lawfare specialists who understand that a new approach is needed to enable robust and sustainable long-term carbon regulation. This article, written by one of the authors of the 2022 IRA, goes into great detail as to how and why the IRA is written in the way that it is.
THE CLEAN AIR ACT AMENDMENTS OF 2022: CLEAN AIR, CLIMATE CHANGE, AND THE INFLATION REDUCTION ACT
From an environmental lawfare perspective, the 2022 IRA is a brilliantly conceived and written piece of legislation:
— It directly identifies carbon dioxide as a dangerous pollutant thus bypassing the need for an EPA Endangerment Finding, for a NAAQS, and for a complex broad-scope regulatory framework based on ‘criteria pollutant’ expectations.
— The EPA is instructed and funded to quickly develop a regulatory framework for carbon. The EPA is allowed to use a compliance strategy based on CAA Section 111 provisions, thus bypassing an expensive and time-consuming CAA Section 108/112 regulatory approach.
— Federal and state agencies, regulatory bodies, and a variety of corporate interests are given great financial incentives to get on board with aggressive carbon regulation.
— The EPA’s Section 111 approach is technically complex and technologically innovative, and is therefore time-consuming and expensive to challenge.
— As long as the 2022 IRA remains on the books, undoing the financial and regulatory impacts of the IRA is not easily done. Moreover, repealing the 2022 IRA is in itself a difficult proposition, given how many governmental and corporate interests benefit from it.
In short, 2022’s IRA legislation makes the 2009 Endangerment Finding unnecessary as a basis for carbon regulation. Trump’s Executive Order sets the stage for the difficult legal and legislative battles which lie ahead by questioning the scientific basis for carbon regulation, a logical first step for justifying repeal of the 2022 IRA.
“I will finish the Ukraine war on day one.”
Has any president failed so utterly on their first day in office.
Yes, and worse. Biden.
More fun:
https://www.newsmax.com/newsmax-tv/fcc-chair-media/2025/01/22/id/1196050/?dkt_nbr=6F01455xf7zg