At the direction of an executive order signed by President Donald Trump on his first day back in office, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin was charged with reconsidering whether the EPA’s finding that emissions of carbon dioxide endanger human health, welfare, or the environment (the Endangerment Finding) is valid and merits continued support.
Zeldin reported his determination and recommendations to Trump last week, but they have not been publicly released.
Critics of the federal effort to limit fossil fuel use and restrict greenhouse gas emissions in the vain effort to prevent climate change – which humans don’t control by the way – have long decried the Endangerment Finding, recognizing it serves as the foundation for nearly all federal climate rules since 2009.
The Endangerment Finding was based on a gross and unjustified expansion of the reach of the Clean Air Act as interpreted by the U.S. Supreme Court in the 2007 case Massachusetts v. EPA.
Massachusetts sued the EPA for not regulating greenhouse gas emissions, specifically carbon dioxide, from mobile sources as a pollutant causing climate change, which the state argued threatened it and its people via higher seas and worsening weather. The EPA argued that under the Clean Air Act (CAA) it had no authority to regulate CO2 emissions because they weren’t considered pollution under the law.
The Court took the occasion to expand the law beyond its wording and intention, rewriting the Clean Air Act to essentially define anything emitted into the air as a pollutant and thus subject to EPA regulation if the agency finds it endangers human health. Under this interpretation of the law, when a person exhales or belches, they are polluting.
Because fossil fuels are the lifeblood of the economy, under the U.S. Supreme Court’s interpretation of the CAA, the EPA has become an authoritarian czar, with the levers of the entire economy in its hands. The U.S. Constitution countenanced no single branch of government, much less a single unaccountable agency under one branch of the government, to wield such unchecked power.
One of the main authors of the Clean Air Act, the late-Rep. John Dingell (D-MI), said the CAA was never intended to apply to naturally occurring atmospheric gases like CO2, oxygen, and H2O. It was certainly not intended to combat so-called climate change. Dingell noted that Congress had explicitly considered climate change legislation on serval occasions and never passed anything.
Still, the ruling came down and under then-President George W. Bush, the EPA failed to issue an Endangerment Finding. Eventually, under President Barack Obama, the EPA ruled CO2 endangered human health and thus had to be controlled.
This came after Congress had failed to pass a climate bill Obama had supported. What he couldn’t get through Congress Obama pushed through the EPA, legislating through the stroke of a pen.
Multiple groups attempted to block or overturn the Endangerment Finding, arguing it was based on a faulty interpretation of the Clean Air Act and that CO2 did not endanger human health at any foreseeable level.
Concerning the latter point, they pointed out the Endangerment Finding was not based on independent research conducted by the EPA, which discovered identifiable health problems caused by additional CO2 in the atmosphere.
Rather, the EPA relied on computer model projections promoted by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which asserted that rising greenhouse gases would, sometime in the next century, cause all manner of catastrophes.
The problem is the computer models used by the IPCC and cited by EPA were and remain flawed, unable to accurately project temperature changes in relation to CO2. Also, predictions of disaster have proven wrong time and again.
In fact, the IPCC’s claims about CO2-induced climate change, like more severe hurricanes, droughts, flooding, wildfires, accelerating sea level rise, the loss of polar bears, etc., based upon these models change from report to report and provide no reliable basis for public policy.
Data, in fact, identify no worsening weather trends in relation to climate change – droughts, hurricanes, tornadoes, wildfires, flooding, heatwaves, etc. are not getting worse, despite IPCC projections saying they should be.
Since the Endangerment Finding’s inception, there has been a regulatory back-and-forth between administrations and the courts concerning regulations based upon it.
Obama issued power plant regulations; pipeline and infrastructure rules; coal, oil, and gas restrictions; and fuel economy standards based on it, each of which blocked development, consumer choice, and restricted energy use.
States and interest groups challenged each of these efforts in federal courts, which delayed, enjoined, or blocked most of them, ruling variously that the regulations were not allowed under the sections of the law claimed, or that they went beyond the scope of the law and were likely to be overturned by the Supreme Court.
Trump issued his own rules for power plants, vehicles, energy, and infrastructure development, which were challenged by different sets of states and interest groups. Some courts blocked these efforts, suggesting they did not comport with the Endangerment Finding.
Biden took office and reversed course again, issuing even stricter rules on power plants, vehicle emissions, and infrastructure projects while restricting fossil fuels. Fortunately, most of these actions were ruled unconstitutional.
In the meantime, automobile companies, utilities, energy firms, and appliance manufacturers had to plan for the future.
They make long-term plans concerning investments. Driven by fear and uncertainty concerning the scope of the Endangerment Finding, they implemented plans that catered to big government’s demand to put climate concerns at the forefront. This has been a disaster, making profitability and consumer satisfaction secondary concerns to the government’s climate mania.
In the automobile industry, for instance, this resulted in a push for electric vehicles that has cost the industry billions of dollars – malinvestments based on political pressure, as opposed to practicality and real market demand.
Across the economy, with the Endangerment Finding looming in the policy background, fossil fuel use has been reduced while renewable energy sources and speculative technologies have been heavily subsidized. The result has been higher prices, fewer choices for average people, and less reliable energy throughout the nation.
Although the Endangerment Finding is not the original sin vis-à-vis the climate change false alarm, it does serve as the cornerstone for misguided federal and state policies. If it goes, the legal justification for such policies collapses.
Here’s hoping that Zeldin recognizes, based on real climate research, that the Endangerment Finding was never justified, and that it stands in the way of President Trump’s push for energy dominance. The time to withdraw the EPA’s toxic carbon dioxide Endangerment Finding is now!
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