EPA Deregulation: When you make an omelet, you have to break some eggs. Do we want a reduced cost of living? Do want small businesses, farms and ranches to drown in regulation?
Do we want cheap cars that are sold elsewhere to be allowed in the US? NYT is terrified the country might actually pull out of its tailspin.
Sure there will be problems. Sure there will be new and different forms of pollution. Sure people will lose their jobs. And then we will work diligently to fix the messes that resulted as we try to make our country better: more prosperous, healthy, and able to think clearly. Businesses were being smothered, and when the Net Zero targets got implemented, that was going to be the end of American industry.
Where was the rending of garments by the NY Times when millions lost their businesses due to COVID? When millions (?) of employees lost their jobs because they refused the clot shot? When many thousands were euthanized in hospitals with ventilators, remdesivir, morphine and midazolam?
A whole lotta eggs got broken then. But did the media give a darn? How about when doctors lost their licenses for bucking the system and treating patients before their lips turned blue? I seem to remember the media egging on the medical regulators, demanding punishments. How dare these doctors think for themselves? How dare patients and doctors try to choose their own treatments? Sacrilege!
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/12/climate/epa-zeldin-rollbacks-pollution.html
In a barrage of pronouncements on Wednesday the Trump administration said it would repeal dozens of the nation’s most significant environmental regulations, including limits on pollution from tailpipes and smokestacks, protections for wetlands, and the legal basis that allows it to regulate the greenhouse gases that are heating the planet.
But beyond that, Lee Zeldin, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, reframed the purpose of the E.P.A. In a two-minute-and-18-second video posted to X, Mr. Zeldin boasted about the changes and said his agency’s mission is to “lower the cost of buying a car, heating a home and running a business.”
[Imagine that! The NYT elites who are so into equity don’t want poor people to have an easier time paying their bills—Nass]
“From the campaign trail to Day 1 and beyond, President Trump has delivered on his promise to unleash energy dominance and lower the cost of living,” Mr. Zeldin said. “We at E.P.A. will do our part to power the great American comeback.”
In perhaps its most consequential act, the agency said it would work to erase the E.P.A.’s legal authority to regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases by reconsidering decades of science that show global warming is endangering humanity. In his video, Mr. Zeldin derisively referred to that legal underpinning as “the holy grail of the climate change religion.”
Mr. Zeldin called Wednesday’s actions “the largest deregulatory announcement in U.S. history.” He added, “today the green new scam ends, as the E.P.A. does its part to usher in a golden age of American success.”
Some of the most significant policy changes Mr. Zeldin said he planned include:
Rolling back restrictions on carbon dioxide emissions from power plants. Currently the E.P.A. requires existing coal-burning power plants and new gas plants built in the United States to cut their greenhouse-gas emissions by 90 percent by 2039.
Rewriting tailpipe pollution standards that were designed to ensure that the majority of new passenger cars and light trucks sold in the United States are all-electric or hybrids by 2032.
Easing limits on mercury emissions from power plants, as well as restrictions on soot and haze from burning coal. A Biden-era rule had aimed to slash by 70 percent emissions from coal-burning power plants of mercury, which has been linked to developmental damage in children.
Greatly reducing the “social cost” of carbon, an economic estimate of the damage caused by each additional ton of carbon dioxide emissions in the atmosphere. That figure plays a significant role in weighing the costs and benefits of regulating industries.
Perhaps the most significant move, though, is an effort to revise a 2009 legal opinion known as the E.P.A. “endangerment finding” which concluded that rising greenhouse gas emissions are a danger to public health. The finding gives the agency the authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. Eliminating it would make it virtually impossible for the E.P.A. to curb climate pollution from automobiles, factories, power plants or oil and gas wells.
Reversing the rule has long been the white whale for climate deniers. But doing so would require Mr. Trump’s E.P.A. to make and substantiate the argument that greenhouse gas emissions pose no foreseeable threats to public health, when decades of science says otherwise.
The science I am familiar with does not support carbon emissions as a significant or imminent risk to health. Ending regulations that curtail carbon emissions makes sense, until quality science comes along to disprove this. As usual with NY Times, their claims to the contrary are based on "declarative science" or "science by decree" -- the science in other words says whatever we say it says. Sorry, NY Times, that kind of science went out of fashion with the end of the Biden/Fauci/Collins regime. Kennedy/Battacharya/Makary/Zeldin and friends believe in the old kind of science, where you have to produce quality data and base policy on that, not saying "safe and effective" or some other mantra over and over. I'm not sure all these deregulations are in the public interest, especially the mercury emissions, and presumably sulfur dioxide. Many of the initiatives coming from Washington now are not subject to public comment, in put, or legislative oversight. However much merit they may have, this accretion and centralization of executive power is a worrisome trend. We might like this or other executive order or regulatory initiative, but what happens when one is made we take strong issue with? The people need more input into these processes. Regrettably, many of them have been brainwashed by oodles of propaganda, but a vigorous debate which is viewable by the public would still be preferable than government by decree.
as someone who lives one mile (yes, literally) from the 2nd largest oil refinery in the country (along with numerous steel mills and related industries) I can tell you that these mega-corporations do not give a rat's ass about any current regulations. they break the rules on the regular, pay the fines they can easily afford and move on. just like the pharma industry, its all rolled into the 'cost of doing business' for them. small to mid-sized outfits, not so much. the rules favor the 'big guys'.
is my area generally cleaner than it was say in the '60's or '70's? definitely it is. the technology that made that possible was developed & implemented and the industries stayed profitable. from what I understand about this 'net zero' concept, it seems like pie-in-the-sky ideals that allow for NO industry at all. how is THAT a plus for humanity? somewhere there's a balance but I kinda doubt it will come with over-regulation or elimination.