Politico for Kidz (TM) is shook.
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said Tuesday he's issuing draft plans to overturn the agency's 2009 scientific finding that greenhouse gases threaten human health and welfare -- a move guaranteed to spark litigation.
Weird how Obama impose this rule on bureaucratic authority alone and yet bureaucratic authority isn't enough to un-impose it.
Why it matters: It's President Trump's most direct effort to rip out climate regulations root and branch -- and make it harder for a successor to impose new ones.
The "endangerment finding" provides a key legal underpinning for regulating heat-trapping gases from cars, power plants and more under the Clean Air Act.
Driving the news: "This is been referred to as basically driving a dagger into the heart of the climate change religion," Zeldin said on Ruthless, the popular conservative podcast where he announced the plan.
Catch up quick: EPA issued the finding in response to a landmark 2007 Supreme Court decision, Massachusetts v. EPA, which held that greenhouse gases are pollutants under the Clean Air Act.
The ruling led then-President Obama in 2009 to issue an order allowing EPA to establish emissions standards for sources shown to reasonably affect health and welfare.
Zeldin has said the decision stipulated that EPA was authorized -- but not obligated -- to regulate greenhouse gases.
The big picture: Researchers and environmentalists have warned ahead of the proposal that it conflicts with the scientific consensus on the unfolding harms from climate change.
"It is callous, dangerous and a breach of our government's responsibility to protect the American people from this devastating pollution," the Environmental Defense Fund said ahead of the long-expected plan.
And Dan Becker of the Center for Biological Diversity said in a statement Tuesday: "By revoking this key scientific finding Trump is putting fealty to Big Oil over sound science and people's health."
State of play: Zeldin argued that he's in favor of less pollution, and cast emissions rules as a distraction, saying "this is an economic issue."
"We want clean air, land and water. Conservatives love the environment, want to be good stewards of the environment," he said.
But he alleged there are people who want to "bankrupt the country" in the name of battling climate change.
Friction point: Zeldin said the agency welcomes a battle over what he called faulty conclusions about climate harms. The EPA administrator would make the final determination after a public comment period.
"We're going to go out to public comment. We're not afraid of allowing the public to weigh in," Zeldin said.
What we're watching: Certain legal battles if and when EPA finalizes the draft proposal after the comment period.
...
Opponents of EPA's greenhouse gas regulations "might be able to fast-track their elimination by bringing lawsuits alleging that -- without an underlying endangerment finding -- the rules are arbitrary and capricious," ClearView Energy Partners said
earlier this year.
Zeldin says the rollback of this "finding" could save Americans $1 trillion in unnecessary "green" redtape.
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin will rescind the Obama administration's endangerment finding declaration in the "largest deregulatory action in the history of America," he announced Tuesday on the "Ruthless" podcast.
Zeldin joined the "Ruthless" podcast to break the news that the EPA would nix the declaration that insisted greenhouse gases like carbon monoxide and methane endanger human lives. Zeldin will officially make the announcement that will drive "a dagger into the heart of the climate change religion" later in the day in Indiana.
"A lot of people are out there listening, they might not know what the endangerment finding is. If you ask congressional Democrats to describe what it is, the left would say that it means that carbon dioxide is a pollutant, carbon dioxide is an endangerment to human health. They might say methane is a pollutant, methane is an endangerment to human health," Zeldin said.
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin will rescind the Obama administration's endangerment finding declaration in the "largest deregulatory action in the history of America," he announced Tuesday on the "Ruthless" podcast.
"That's an oversimplified, I would say inaccurate way to describe it," Zeldin continued. "The Obama administration said that carbon dioxide, when mixed with a bunch of other well-mixed gasses, greenhouse gasses, that it contributes to climate change. How much? They don't say... they say that climate change engenders human health, so because of these different mental leaps... then there were all sorts of vehicle regulations that followed."
"Ruthless" co-host Josh Holmes noted that endangerment finding is "the hub to the spoke of the left's environmental agenda, essentially," to which Zeldin agreed.
"This has been referred to as basically driving a dagger into the heart of the climate change religion," Zeldin said.
"Most Americans, we care about the environment, we want clean air, land and water. Conservatives love the environment, want to be good stewards of the environment. There are people who then, in the name of climate change, are willing to bankrupt the country," he continued. "In the name of environmental justice, they will get tens of billions of dollars appropriated to their friends rather than actually remediating environmental issues."
The full interview is here: