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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Only took seventeen years to reverse the 2009 classification by the EPA of CO2 as a pollutant. Seventeen years.
During which time the Earth got greener.
CO2 – the green, green gas of Earth.
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.
“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.
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
Perhaps we should encourage some redefinition: “Renewables” = real time power, and “Fossil fuel” = long term natural storage.
I think Sometimes power – would be better.
Energy cannot be created or destroyed – renewing it = perpetual motion. Neat trick.
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.
Yes. This won’t be seen as reality kicking in, just more ‘orange man bad’.
Why did it take so long? It’s plant food, the more they get the better they do and the greener the world gets.
Can someone tell the Greens please?
They have absolutely zero interest in listening or changing their entirely closed minds.
You want them to give up their god? No chance.
When Mr Trump talks of making tough decisions, he’s looking at things that affect the whole planet.
When Mr Burnham talks of tough decisions, it might take a quid off your bus fare.
Just a little perspective for a Friday morning
Andy Capp does have a thing about buses.
A quid off your bus fare paid for by a quid on your taxes. Astonishing how many people don’t understand that – and a quid on taxes of people who don’t use buses.
Exactly JXB. I’m still surprised by the amount of people that still don’t understand. If they take a pound off here, they will always add at least a pound somewhere else. And it’s all our hard earned money.
Makes them tough decisions a lot easier for the likes of the Bus Boy
Good name for him.
A busboy: US terminology for a worker responsible for clearing, cleaning, and resetting tables throughout a service in a restaurant.
Just about right for his “skill-set”.
But let’s not forget the world stage importance of establishing why we’re crap at Eurovision.