Sanity finally comes to the EPA

Sanity finally comes to the EPA

Hallelujah, it’s about time! Years ago I wrote a monthly business article for Knoxville’s daily. They fired me for questioning our local health department’s edicts during Covid. They were not at all pleased with my questioning global warming either and were looking for the right time to get rid of me. My articles that laid out the opposing evidence regarding the climate hysterics generated the most comments – mostly hate mail – of any subject I wrote on. In fact, one Sunday’s letters page was devoted entirely with letters either mainly condemning my heresy or a precious few supporting me. When I said there was no “settled science” and no “consensus” you might have thought I was saying the Pope wasn’t Catholic. I wrote about the flimsy evidence, the simplistic yet over complicated models, the poor predictions, the resulting over regulations, incredible costs and marginal benefits. All it did was make Al Gore and his buddies rich. The green lobby was dominant. The big banks and the big investment funds headed by Blackrock’s Larry Fink were driving us to net zero and a lower standard of living whether we liked it or not.

Then slowly but surely, the green religion started developing more skeptics as burdensome regulations started and the deterioration in the quality of our lives became evident. Toilets didn’t flush. Dishwashers didn’t clean dishes. Washing machines didn’t get clothes clean. Air conditioners didn’t cool. Automobiles got more expensive. Gasoline had to contain ethanol which ruined small gas engines and shortened the lives of automobile and marine engines. All of a sudden cars were stopping and starting driving drivers crazy. Windmills killed birds and disrupted sea life. Solar panels cluttered up the countryside. Nuclear energy was shut down as was coal. There was a war declared on fossil fuels. Lawn mowers, weed eaters, gas furnaces, pizza ovens were all banned in some states. Cow flatulence was thought about being taxed (like in Denmark). All the while gashouse emissions kept rising as China, India and the developing world refused to get poorer by adopting expensive green energy. Europe stagnated and quit growing as the greenies took control of governments.

Now all of that is coming to a screaming halt and we knew it would because President Trump had declared that the climate change was a hoax. His EPA chief Lee Zelden finally got around to repealing Obama’s EPA’s “endangerment” finding that declared greenhouse gas emissions a threat to public health and safety. I can just see the greenies running around like Chicken Little screaming “We’re all gonna die!” The “endangerment” finding came about due to a 5-4 ruling by the Supreme Court that greenhouse gases were pollutants under the Clean Air Act and could be regulated by the zealots at Obama’s EPA. The law required the EPA to regulate pollutants if it determined they can “reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health.”

Does this mean that we are free at last? Well, be certain that the commissars of the environmental industry will sue – and likely lose. In the 5-4 decision Justices Thomas, Alito, Roberts and Scalia voted no. Antony Kennedy joined the liberal justices in the majority. With the current court, expect a 6-3 majority in favor of the new EPA ruling.

Importantly, in addition to getting rid of all the nonsense stemming from the old ruling, the gashouse emissions rules for automobiles now also goes away. I presume with it go the fleet milage standards which forced auto companies to make vehicles that consumers didn’t want and to blow billions of dollars on electric vehicles. Also those silly emissions credits that made EV-only companies solvent or in the case of Tesla more profitable will go away. Look for more failures in that industry. So we got higher sticker prices, increased maintenance costs and lower component life. What’s not to love? Overall, the Trump administration projects more than $1.3 trillion in total regulatory relief. For automobiles per-vehicle compliance costs are estimated to fall by $2,400. Now if the president would get rid of his silly tariffs, imagine what the total fall in costs and sticker prices would be.

The heavy hand of the government just got a wee bit lighter.