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Trump’s EPA Ends America’s War on CO2

After nearly two decades, America's war on CO2 is being brought to a well-deserved end, with Lee Zeldin, the head of Trump's EPA, scrapping Biden-era green power plant rules, says Tilak Doshi.

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On Monday in Houston, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin stood alongside Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum at a G20 ministerial meeting on energy abundance and signed what may be the single most consequential act of environmental deregulation in American history. The final rule, formally the “Partial Repeal of the Carbon Pollution Standards for Fossil Fuel-Fired Electric Generating Units”, eviscerates the Biden administration’s 2024 mandate requiring coal- and gas-fired power plants to capture 90% of their carbon dioxide emissions or shut their doors. A companion proposal goes further still, moving to rescind the EPA’s underlying claim to authority to regulate greenhouse gases from power plants under the Clean Air Act altogether. It is an attempt not merely to repeal a rule but to permanently dismantle the legal scaffolding beneath the entire punitive regulatory edifice inspired by the Church of Climate.

The reaction from the climate establishment was as predictable as it was shrill. The green rag Guardian announced that Trump’s EPA had stripped itself of regulating ability, gutting the Clean Air Act in “a gift to planet polluters”. Environmental groups vowed immediate litigation, and the Clean Air Task Force branded the repeal unlawful. Sceptics will recognise the pattern by now: any retreat from Net Zero orthodoxy is met not with argument but with moral panic dressed up as science.

Undoing a fraudulent finding

To understand why Monday’s action matters so much, one has to trace the regulatory lineage back nearly two decades. In 2007,

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25 Comments
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Oldest Most Voted
RJBassett
RJBassett
7 hours ago

Lee Zeldin and Chris Wright are resurrecting American prosperity which will be powered by cheaper energy for decades to come. By 2030 the US’s global economic dominance will be unsurmountable and yet, few people will understand how that happened.

The average Brit or European already makes 30% less than their American peers by 2030 we will be making 50% less as we struggle with wishy washy fools still letting net zero steal any hope of abundance or prosperity we have left.

This is so big yet so little understood.

DontPanic
DontPanic
16 hours ago

Suppose I were to build a computer model that indicated that Net Zero supporters were at risk of gangrene in their legs and then proposed that to reduce that risk they had their legs amputated, would they be in favour ?

Marcus Aurelius knew
Marcus Aurelius knew
1 day ago

Only took seventeen years to reverse the 2009 classification by the EPA of CO2 as a pollutant. Seventeen years.

JXB
JXB
1 day ago

During which time the Earth got greener.

CO2 – the green, green gas of Earth.

RJBassett
RJBassett
7 hours ago

If the Dems had won or any of the country club Republicans, this wouldn’t be fixed for 30 years.

kev
kev
1 day ago

We have been called many names, including Climate Deniers by these eco nuts.

I don’t really go in for name calling, but responding by calling them all Plant Haters might have some mileage.

A strong economy is dependent on cheap and reliable energy, a strong economy is capable of being able to mitigate any real environmental challenges, reduce (actual) pollution and also mitigate the effects of extreme weather events (which happen) and poverty.

We need to stop fighting imaginary hobgoblins, use the resources we still have, and improve the lives and outcomes of as many people as possible.

Renewables have a place in the mix, but it is very limited and can never be used as a primary source (except nuclear) due to its intermittency and inability to stabilise a grid system.

JXB
JXB
1 day ago
Reply to  kev

Renewables have a place in the mix…”

Where and why? We managed an Industrial Revolution without them, in fact it was possible because we replaced them, and then 200 years of industrial and economic progress. Without them the UK’s electricity supply was constant, reliable, secure and stable – and low cost.

Anyway the term “renewables” is gibberish.

kev
kev
1 day ago
Reply to  JXB

Their place would be strictly off grid, for remote area’s, at very limited scale. On the roof of individual homes, or to heat water solar has some very limited use.

Also, as mentioned, nuclear power, which is classed as “renewable”, is very useful for baseload, as the French use it, for upward of 80% of their supply.

Wind is almost totally useless, unless you live in some very remote and isolated community, in some far Northern latitude, it may have some utility.

I’m not in favour of these so-called “renewables”, which should never be allowed anywhere near a grid system!

And yes, renewables is a gibberish

marcusc
marcusc
15 hours ago
Reply to  JXB

To be fair, water power had a lot to do with the industrial revolution.

RJBassett
RJBassett
7 hours ago
Reply to  marcusc

Right, but try to damn a river now or create a hydro reservoir anywhere in the West, you can forget about that.

JohnK
JohnK
1 day ago
Reply to  kev

Perhaps we should encourage some redefinition: “Renewables” = real time power, and “Fossil fuel” = long term natural storage.

JXB
JXB
1 day ago
Reply to  JohnK

I think Sometimes power – would be better.

Energy cannot be created or destroyed – renewing it = perpetual motion. Neat trick.

stewart
stewart
1 day ago

The final and most important battleground has still to be conquered and that is the minds of regular people.

Twenty five years of relentless brainwashing has left most people with the firm conviction that the earth’s climate is being dangerously altered by human activity. It is going to take time and a lot more counter information to undo that damage.

Until that happens, most of them will find view this legislative change in the US as the reckless action of the backward, uneducated MAGA movement. Not least because that’s how they will be told to view it and they are well prepped to see it that way.

PopeAdrian7th
PopeAdrian7th
1 day ago
Reply to  stewart

Yes. This won’t be seen as reality kicking in, just more ‘orange man bad’.

Boomer Bloke
Boomer Bloke
1 day ago

Why did it take so long? It’s plant food, the more they get the better they do and the greener the world gets.

Gary Cooper
Gary Cooper
1 day ago

Can someone tell the Greens please?

kev
kev
1 day ago
Reply to  Gary Cooper

They have absolutely zero interest in listening or changing their entirely closed minds.

JXB
JXB
1 day ago
Reply to  Gary Cooper

You want them to give up their god? No chance.

Sarony
Sarony
9 hours ago
Reply to  Gary Cooper

The Greens in the UK are leaving the environment behind and pivoting towards Islam

RJBassett
RJBassett
7 hours ago
Reply to  Gary Cooper

Understanding plant life is beyond their pay grades.

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