Trump administration EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin says he'll revoke an Obama-era endangerment finding that so-called greenhouse gases (GHG) pose a public threat, calling it the "most significant deregulatory action in U.S. history."

My toes just curled. 

Speaking to the "Ruthless" podcast on Tuesday, Zeldin said, "We want clean air, land and water. Conservatives love the environment, want to be good stewards of the environment," but that the GHG finding and the resulting regulatory burden is "bankrupt[ing] the country."

Under then-administrator Lisa Jackson, the EPA in 2009 ruled that six GHGs — carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons, and sulfur hexafluoride — would cause us all to drown, starve, get blown away by Category Eleventy hurricanes, or spontaneously combust immediately after saying, "But it's a dry heat" out loud.

Assuming anyone survived the repeal of Net Neutrality, that is. I'm still learning how to use my legs again after they were crushed by the Trump tax cuts of 2017. 

Jackson's finding unleashed a biblical flood of regulations on everything from family sedans to power plants. It served as the moral justification under Obama and later under Joe Biden for diverting untold billions of dollars to "clean" power sources like solar and wind that are less reliable, more expensive, and not noticeably cleaner than traditional energy sources.

Over at Hot Air, my friend and colleague Ed Morrissey explained it this way:

To understand the import of Zeldin's action, it's important to recall how the EPA created this "endangerment finding" in the first place. Activist groups sued the EPA to force them to classify 'greenhouse gases' as pollutants for the purpose of regulation. The Clean Air Act allowed the EPA to do so, but Congress did not require it in the statute. The Supreme Court ruled in 2007 in a 5-4 decision that experts mean more than statutes, and allowed the lawsuit to continue.

So we've endured a multitrillion-dollar regulatory burden that's made everything worse or more expensive from gas cans to gas cars, thanks to a 2007 Supreme Court decision enabling a 2009 regulatory finding by an administration hell-bent on taxing and regulating us to death.

The Hill's Rachel Frazin wrapped her piece with this totally unbiased, peer-reviewed gem: "The proposal to repeal the finding comes in spite of decades of evidence that climate change drives an increase in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather."

In a statement, the Environmental Defense Fund called Zeldin's plan "callous, dangerous and a breach of our government's responsibility to protect the American people from this devastating pollution."

The Center for Biological Diversity also said in a statement that "By revoking this key scientific finding Trump is putting fealty to Big Oil over sound science and people's health." The Center's Dan Becker must have missed the part where the world produces more oil than ever — and we're doing just fine, thank you very much. 

Zeldin says he'll issue the ruling later today during a visit to a factory in Indiana that serves as part of the truck-manufacturing supply chain, so Politico's E&E sister publication went with this angle: "The transportation sector is the largest source of planet-heating gases in the U.S."

In other words, the Trump administration hasn't even issued the ruling yet, and already you can hear the lamentations of the Left's women. 

Speaking of whom, I can't wait to read what Obama has to say about another pillar of his legacy getting pounded into dust.

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