In yet another return to sanity, the Trump administration is now planning to roll back a key Obama administration climate "finding" that was used to regulate the daylights out of energy production in the United States. That Obama-era regulation identified six greenhouse gases requiring regulation, which included CO2.
President Donald Trump's administration is poised to walk back an Obama-era greenhouse gas finding that serves as a lynchpin for justifying climate regulations across the country on Wednesday.
The 2009 "endangerment finding" identifies six greenhouse gases that the Obama administration said pose "a threat to public health and welfare." That harm finding was then used to justify sweeping climate regulations from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), such as raising fuel economy standards and limiting power plant emissions, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday.
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin hailed the move as cutting through government red tape in an interview with the Journal.
Those regulations, of course, were like putting a sea anchor on the economy. It seems Democrats never saw a scheme for jacking up energy costs that they didn't like, and the Obama people were no exceptions. Now we're seeing some of the stupidity reversed.
The Journal reports that the final rule will be made public later this week and is set to eliminate requirements to measure, report, certify and comply with federal greenhouse-gas emission standards for motor vehicles. The rollback does not yet affect power plants or oil and gas facilities.
"More energy drives human flourishing," Interior Secretary Doug Burgum told the outlet. "Energy abundance is the thing that we have to focus on, not regulating certain forms of energy out."
Secretary Burgum is, of course, correct. Energy is at the heart of everything we do. Energy costs are reflected in the price of everything we buy, every product, every commodity, every service, everything.
Trump is reportedly expected to hold an event at the White House on Wednesday with Zeldin and Energy Secretary Chris Wright. There they will announce a new initiative for the Department of War to purchase electricity from coal-powered plants.
It's a solid move overall.
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What's not mentioned here, probably because it wasn't in the Obama administration rules that the Trump administration is now defenestrating, is nuclear power. Nuclear power has the best of both worlds: Minimal emissions, high energy density, and reliability. Coal, though, is still abundant, and modern coal plants are much cleaner than those built only a few short decades ago.
We might remember 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton promising to put coal workers out of their jobs. That's how Democrats think: Make up a crisis out of whole cloth, use it to gain more control over the lives of everyday Americans.
Where CO2 is concerned, the Obama "finding" is doubly stupid. If you look at the planet's history, we are at the moment actually at near-record lows for the atmosphere's CO2 content - and I can promise you that in the Permian, there were no gorgonopsids driving SUVs and burning coal.
CO2 is emitted, literally, by every breathing thing on the planet. It's essential to plant growth, including all of our crops that we depend on.
This move by the Trump administration is one more step towards unlocking America's energy potential. That's a good thing - and something we must remember when the midterms roll around this autumn.
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