It’s been said before, but I’ll say it again: the Republican Party is a death cult. So many of the moves made by the Trump administration actively endanger the lives of Americans. President Donald Trump’s second term has seen the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) completely abandon environmental protection. On Thursday, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced the agency would rescind the legal opinion that formed the basis for many federal laws regulating greenhouse gases and mitigating climate change.
According to the Washington Post, the “endangerment finding” was implemented in 2009 under the Obama administration, which found that the federal government had a legal basis to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. During a news conference announcing the move, Zeldin called it the “single largest act of deregulation in the history of the United States of America.”
“The endangerment finding and the regulations that were based on it didn’t just regulate emissions,” Zeldin said Thursday. “It regulated and targeted the American dream.” I’m an American, and my dream is to live in a world where climate disasters aren’t increasing in severity every year.
While the ruling will largely remove limits on greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles, the real danger is that it could prevent future administrations from implementing climate regulations.
“If the legal reasoning that they proposed to rely on for revoking the endangerment finding is upheld in court, no future EPA will be able to regulate CO2 emissions.” Jeff Holmstead, former head of the EPA’s air office under George W. Bush, told the Post.
Politico reports that Energy Secretary Chris Wright commissioned five scientists last summer to draft a 141-page report downplaying the effects of climate change. While it was a nod to the fringe science of climate change denialism, the report has been trashed both within the government by scientists at the Department of Energy, as well as by outside climate science experts.
It appears even the Trump administration is aware of the flimsy basis of the “science” in that report, as none of its findings were used as the basis for rescinding the finding.
“They would have been obliterated in court,” said Andrew Dessler, a climate scientist at Texas A&M University, told Politico. “This is the gold standard of climate skepticism, and if this is the best they can do, then they’ve proven how robust climate science actually is.”
Source: EPA Rescinds Ruling Allowing Government To Regulate Greenhouse Gases
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