As discussed in a couple of recent posts here and here, the so-called Endangerment Finding (EF) was an EPA regulatory action early in the Obama Administration (December 2009) that now provides the foundation for all government efforts to restrict and suppress the use of hydrocarbons in our economy. In one of his first day Executive Orders (“Unleashing American Energy”), President Trump directed the incoming EPA Administrator to submit, within 30 days, “recommendations to the Director of OMB on the legality and continuing applicability of the Administrator’s findings.” Lee Zeldin was then confirmed and sworn in as EPA Administrator on January 29; but the 30th day after the EO, February 19, passed without any public news about a recommendation on the EF.
Today there is news. Apparently The Washington Post was the first outlet to break the story; but that piece is behind their paywall, so I won’t link to it. Fortunately, multiple outlets not behind paywall promptly posted slightly rewritten versions of the WaPo story. Here is a version from Politico, and here is a version from the Associated Press as it appeared in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
To no one’s surprise, the news is that Zeldin has recommended reconsideration of the EF. Apparently the recommendation was made a few days ago in a private memorandum. Here is the AP/AJC version:
In a potential landmark action, the head of the Environmental Protection Agency has privately urged the Trump administration to reconsider a scientific finding that has long been the central basis for U.S. action against climate change. In a report to the White House, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin called for a rewrite of the agency’s finding that determined planet-warming greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare.
If this was a private memorandum, how did the story turn up in The Washington Post and other outlets? The answer is, of course, anonymous leaks. The AP/AJC article says there were “four people who were briefed on the matter but spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.” No surprise there — I would expect that 90% or more of the holdover staff at EPA are hostile to the new administration and happy to do whatever they can to undermine it. But note this from a little further down in the same story:
Trump, at a Cabinet meeting Wednesday, said Zeldin told him he is moving to eliminate about 65% of the EPA’s workforce. “A lot of people that weren’t doing their job, they were just obstructionist,” Trump said.
Trump’s EPA Administrators should have done that in his first four year term. But it’s never too late.
Perhaps most notable about the news stories is the haughty and dismissive reaction of the usual suspects on the left. For example, Politico gets quotes from David Doniger of the Natural Resources Defense Council and Vickie Patton of the Environmental Defense Fund:
“This decision ignores science and the law,” David Doniger, senior strategist and attorney for climate and energy at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said in a statement. “Abdicating EPA’s clear legal duty to curb climate-changing pollution only makes sense if you consider who would benefit: the oil, coal, and gas magnates who handed the president millions of dollars in campaign contributions.” . . . Vickie Patton, the Environmental Defense Fund’s general counsel, said any move to undo the finding “would be reckless, unlawful, and ignore EPA’s fundamental responsibility to protect Americans from destructive climate pollution. We will vigorously oppose it.”
Clearly, the environmental groups and Democrat-led states will do everything they can to oppose the roll-back of the EF; and they have essentially infinite funds to litigate. So will the rescission be a difficult thing to do, and/or likely to fail in court? Much of the discussion in the two linked pieces, and in others I have read, dwells on the heavy lift necessary to undo a regulation that has gone through the “notice and comment” rule-making process. For example, a Bloomberg piece here (behind paywall) presents rescission of the EF as an enormous challenge:
It could take years for the EPA to go through a required rulemaking process to unwind the endangerment finding, and even then, it might not survive inevitable legal challenges.
They’re trying to scare the administration off, but I don’t think they are right, or that it will work. First, the idea that the rule-making process will “take years” is ridiculous. Yes, it is a cumbersome process. But the Obama people took office on January 20, 2009, went through the full rule-making process, and published the EF in final form on December 15, 2009 — less than 11 months later. I don’t know any reason why the Trump people can’t meet the same schedule, or even improve on it by a few months.
Second, the scientific papers to use to support the rescission are all easily at hand. A couple of junior people with access to the internet and Google can easily come up with several hundred papers published since 2009 and supporting the no-danger position. As I laid out in my January 26 post, most important are papers showing no increasing trends in severe weather events (hurricanes, tornadoes, droughts, floods, wildfires, etc.). There are very many of these.
Lacking any convincing evidence of increases in severe weather, the enviros are left with only a claim that gradual warming over the course of the next century will be some kind of big problem. But EPA can respond that the costs and risks of a forced energy transition to an untested system pose far, far greater dangers to human health and welfare: blackouts in the dead of winter when all heat is mandated to be electric; massive fires at huge grid scale battery installations used to back up wind and solar electricity; toxic gases from such fires imperiling large urban populations; leaks and explosions impacting hydrogen infrastructure; electric cars and buses running out of charge on freezing cold days and stranding the occupants; and so on and on. How about the risk of large numbers of people losing access to electricity or to home heat or to automobile transportation because they can’t afford the cost?
The point of all these things is that they are not a question of the “science” of global warming. They are a question of making a judgment call trading off one set of dangers and risks against another. No amount of appeals to the authority of “scientists” preaching global warming alarm can even address the question of the risks from the forced adoption of the unproven new energy technologies.
So get to work, EPA! I want to see the EF gone by Thanksgiving. Then we’ll have something to really be thankful for.
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The thing with the rule making process is the next administration that feels differently can do the same.
That’s why the EPA as a whole has got to go.
Much of it is duplicated at the state level, especially in blue states where even some localities have environmental management districts on top of that.
Federal law Trumps State law.
The 2009 “endangerment finding” was nothing more than a power grab by the Obama regime. CO2 is not a pollutant. It is a trace gas, plant food and necessary for life.
CO2 levels were 10-15 times higher in the past paleoclimate record and Earth did not suffer from a runaway greenhouse effect. If it did, we wouldn’t be here to talk about it.
Reverse the unscientific 2009 EF, politics masquerading as science. End it already.
I agree, the EPA needs to go–like the Ed department.
Impossible. As long as we have environmental protection laws on the books – which is forever – it is necessary to have an environmental agency to enforce those laws. Given that, proper enforcement policy requires explicit well-written laws (the Clean Air Act simply must be reformed to prohibit regulation of carbon and also prohibit any regulation of climate). It also requires Presidents who correctly enforce the law – unfortunately, voters have proven very fickle, flipping GOP one election then Dem the next.
The difficult we do quickly. The impossible will take a bit longer.
The EPA was set up by Nixon to reduce air, water and soil pollution.
There was never any mention of CO2 being evil, etc.
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The skill set of the EPA should be strictly limited to air, soil, water pollution and nothing else.
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For that, about 2000 people would be needed to co-ordinate with state agencies,
The states would pay for their own clean ups, not the federal government.
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If states know ahead of time, they have to clean up their own mess, they will be more careful to make a mess.
Many projects would not be started, because they would be too messy
Largely due to EPA, etc., brainwashing, Europe tried to scare the US, with help of the Biden clique, into going down the black hole of expensive, highly-subsidized wind/solar/battery systems that would have produced electricity at 15 c/kWh, about 2.5 times greater than from domestic US gas, coal, nuclear, hydro, which would have made the US even more uncompetitive in world markets
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European Conglomerates would finance, build, erect, own and operate almost 30,000 MW of offshore windmills, providing work for many thousands of European workers for decades, and multi-$billion profits each year.
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That ruse did not quite work out, because Trump was elected.
The European, hate-Trump elites furious. Projects being cancelled. The European wind industry in shambles
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The US was saved from the leftist, woke folks by Trump, who declared a National Energy Emergency, and put W/S/B systems at the bottom of the list, and cut their licenses and subsidies, and put their environmental impact under proper scrutiny.
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Europe was using the IPCC-invented, global-warming/climate-change hoax, so the US would also deliver electricity to users at high c/kWh, to preserve Europe’s extremely advantageous trade balance with the US.
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/international-trade-is-a-dog-eat-dog-business
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/co2-has-a-very-minor-role-in-the-atmosphere
https://www.windtaskforce.org/profiles/blogs/we-are-in-a-co2-famine
Subsidies shift costs from project Owners to ratepayers, taxpayers, government debt:
1) Federal and state tax credits, up to 50% (Community tax credit of 10 percent – Federal tax credit of 30 percent – State tax credit and other incentives of up to 10%);
2) 5-y Accelerated Depreciation write off of the entire project;
3) Loan interest deduction
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The subsidies reduce the owning and operating cost of a project by 50%, which means electricity can be sold at 50% less than it costs to produce.
Utilities pay 15 c/kWh, wholesale, after 50% subsidies, for electricity from fixedoffshore wind systems
Utilities pay 18 c/kWh, wholesale, after 50% subsidies, for electricity from floating offshore wind
Utilities pay 12 c/kWh, wholesale, after 50% subsidies, for electricity from larger solar systems
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Excluded costs, at a future 30% W/S annual penetration on the grid, based on UK and German experience:
– Onshore grid expansion/reinforcement to connect distributed W/S systems, about 2 c/kWh
– A fleet of traditional power plants to quickly counteract W/S variable output, on a less than minute-by-minute basis, 24/7/365, which leads to more Btu/kWh, more CO2/kWh, more cost of about 2 c/kWh
– A fleet of traditional power plants to provide electricity during 1) low-wind periods, 2) high-wind periods, when rotors are locked in place, and 3) low solar periods during mornings, evenings, at night, snow/ice on panels, which leads to more Btu/kWh, more CO2/kWh, more cost of about 2 c/kWh
– Pay W/S system Owners for electricity they could have produced, if not curtailed, about 1 c/kWh
– Importing electricity at high prices, when W/S output is low, 1 c/kWh
– Exporting electricity at low prices, when W/S output is high, 1 c/kWh
– Disassembly on land and at sea, reprocessing and storing at hazardous waste sites, about 2 c/kWh
Some of these values exponentially increase as more W/S systems are added to the grid
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The economic/financial insanity and environmental damage of it all is off the charts.
No wonder Europe’s near-zero, real-growth economy is in such big do-do
That economy has been tied into knots by inane people.
YOUR tax dollars are building these projects so YOU will have much higher electric bills.
Remove YOUR tax dollars using your vote, and none of these projects would be built, and YOUR electric bills would be lower
EPA is never “going”. The environmental protection laws are never “going” which is why there is an environmental enforcement agency in the government. Whenever a leftwinger gets elected again, it will flip. That President will still have the power to resurrect the EA, and we’ll continue to cycle back and forth. It is inevitable.
The real solution to this problem is that Congress must amend the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments to explicitly prohibit regulation of carbon as an air pollutant and to prohibit any regulation of climate, period. Congress can do that this year in the budget reconciliation bill and Trump will sign it. It is quite possible a subsequent Dem-controlled Congress will vote to put carbon and climate regulation back in the law, but that would at least force the matter back in the hands of Congress and not be solely at the whim of whoever is in the White House today. It is much harder to change the law than it is to change Administrative Executive Orders.
The GOP/conservatives are still mostly thinking short term. It is very likely that Dems will win back the House next year, ending any hopes of legislative remedies. The party not in the White House almost always wins control of one or both Houses of Congress in the midterms. That’s exactly what happened to Trump and the GOP in 2018.
Terminating the EA is a good and necessary act, but it is far more necessary to amend the CAA.
‘Congress can do that [amend the 1990 CAA] this year in the budget reconciliation bill and Trump will sign it.’
Can reconciliation bills be used to amend policies? My understanding from one of Menton’s previous articles is that only budget items could be addressed in such bills, which is why he doesn’t think the Dem’s effort to designate CO2, CH4, etc. as ‘pollutants’ within the Inflation Reduction Act (the FY 2022 reconciliation bill) will stick.
True, but that’s politics- which is why in this case, the administration should present a good case for changing this regulation- so convincing that a leftist administration won’t try.
Yes, flip-flopping is a major problem – the antidote is to slash power of government over people.
Not Left, Not Right . . . Try Up – by Harry Binswanger
Yeah, but they will have to make up brand new “science” to justify any reimposition of true “endangerment.” They used the then-operative version of the UN IPCC reports to justify the scientific basis of projected bad weather hysteria. Today’s version (AR6) of WGI shows no damages from past speculation of increased severe weather patterns over time.
Additionally, the Trump Administration will use the latest reports from independent organizations that show CliSciFi General Circulation Models (Climate Models) are garbage and do not “hindcast” nor “forecast” actual climate metrics. They can no longer hide behind loose statements like: “GCMs generally reflect broad trends in the climate.” Without U.S. scientific involvement and support in the UN IPCC AR7 process, they will have no valid basis to claim “endangerment,” especially since the law about the dangers of pollution have to apply only to the Continental U.S., not to damages to the rest of the world.
The EPA endangerment finding is based on the results from fraudulent climate models. This fraud started with the 1967 paper published by Manabe and Wetherald. The errors in this paper have never been corrected and provided the foundation for the pseudoscientific concepts of radiative forcings, feedbacks and climate sensitivity still used in the climate models today.
The concept of a global average temperature is also incorrect. This should be replaced by climate zones such as those defined by the Köppen-Geiger climate classification.
Independent of any activity on the EPA CO2 endangerment finding, the administration should shut down all of the ‘equilibrium’ climate modeling activities funded at NOAA, NASA, Dept of Energy, NSF etc.
The Fifth National Climate Assessment (NCA5) is also based on fraudulent climate models. This should also be reviewed and rejected. The US Global Change Research Project (USGCRP) that prepared NCA5 should also lose its funds.
The climate modeling fraud is considered in more detail in ‘A Nobel Prize for Climate Modeling Errors’. The reasons for rejecting NCA5 are discussed in the Tom Nelson podcast # 271. The invalid use of the global mean temperature record as a measure of climate change is addressed in the Researchgate preprint ‘A Proposed Definition of Climate and Climate Change for IEEE PP2030 and Related Standards’
Detailed references are given in the ‘Nobel Prize’ paper. The NCA5 rejection is considered in the podcast.
Problem is, NCA5 is Congressionally mandated and the supposed ‘official’ opinion of 13 US agencies. So simply assailing it in a podcast isn’t legally good enough.
The NCA itself needs to be repealed. Rather far down the 47 to do list.
Mr. Clark: Agreed. I hope they listen to you, and rescind due to the fraud you identify, among any and all reasons. If fraud is not a basis for rescission under statutes or rules, assert common law! The blatant fraud of Obama EPA should be noted at every opportunity.
Revising the Clean Air Act to specifically not include any GHGs as “pollutants” would be a step against a revanchist future regime.
Agreed. But it shouldn’t be needed. There is nothing in the CAA stating GHGs are “pollutants.” But Obama’s EPA went way out over their skis with the EF. So, it unfortunately becomes necessary.
The remaining people at the EPA will be too concerned about their job to do anything to regulate CO2. And no one in the Federal Government will have an appetite to offer subsidies that are available under the inflation reduction act unless there are already binding contracts that would cost more to get out of than continue. And DOGE is combing over every contract.
I think the Climate Hoax™ will collapse faster than people expect. It is has been kept alive as a deep state and UN initiative for far too long. Take away the funding and the hoaxers will seek out new scams.
Even Reuters have come out and said “renewables” have done nothing to reduce CO2:
its-a-100-flip-reuters-suddenly-is-skeptical-on-climate-policy
Suddenly the world is full of CO2 induced climate change skeptics.
Reality intrudes.
The Climate Alarmists have “cried Wolf!” too many times. No CO2 Wolf arrives, and people start noticing.
The Congress must pass legislation.
Simple legislation. Just amend the circular CAA definition of a pollutant as that which pollutes. At the time, the meaning was clear. VOCs contribute smog. SO2 contributes acid rain. CO2 was not then on the radar.
Or better yet, the Clean Air Act must be amended to prohibit regulation of climate by the Federal and all state and local governments.
If the CAA simply prohibits regulation of CO2, a leftist President will flip to regulating CO to achieve the same end. Or to some other component affecting the production and use of fossil fuels.
You can spend all the money you’ve got plus all you can borrow trying to change the weather. Times 30 if you’re trying to change the 30 years of weather that is defined as “climate”.
Gone over this several times before.
Executive action would be good IFF supported by inevitable court litigation concerning major questions doctrine.
Real answer is to amend CAA to provide clarity that Congress did not originally.
Those proposing or enforcing fuel restrictions should be asked if their way will lead to the death of some people such as those caught in blackouts in freezing weather. (Precedents exist, e g Texas twice since 2000.)
Next, ask them if they condone policies that kill. If yes, arrest them and charge them with murderous intent.
Those who chat about the lethal danger of net zero carbon policies seem afraid to discuss the unacceptable reality of causing deaths.
I know of no law (possibly except in military matters) that authorises policy makers to pass policies that lead to predictable deaths. The offence is known as premeditated murder. Come on, you people paid as public prosecutors, get in there and do your jobs. Arrest those who confess that their policies will cause avoidable deaths. Geoff S
Thanks for the link to the AP/AJC story.
“Associated Press science writer Seth Borenstein contributed to this story.”
For years, Borenstein has been thumping the “climate” stories as though “science” was what he was writing about. No. It has always been about the agenda, not the scientific substance.
“the heavy lift necessary to undo a regulation that has gone through the “notice and comment” rule-making process”
It shouldn’t be so heavy. It’s one thing to make changing the US constitution a heavy lift, but not a regulation!
Vicky Patton. If there is a famine somewhere we should not send food aid and certainly not grain. Because that would only benefit the bakers.
The EPA endangerment document I’ve seen is a mess, poorly written, inter-dependent with other things.
Yes, common with climate catastrophists.
How on earth can a gas that every human, animal and bug exhales be called pollution is beyond me!
I understand that it is important for us to show CO2 emissions are not a danger to the planet but more importantly I want to see the evidence that it is. I don’t think they have anything proving CO2 emissions are a danger to the planet. Therefore we should demand all evidence scientific and otherwise that justified the endangerment finding. My guess is that they have nothing that a proper review couldn’t easily dismantle. If they withhold material they would be breaking the law. Unlawful or dishonest findings should never be honored and that is reason enough to axe them.