Editors at National Review Online assess changes at the federal government’s top environmental agency.
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin will, in coordination with other relevant agencies, be “reconsidering” the Obama EPA’s “Endangerment Finding.” This is big and very welcome news. The EPA concluded in the 2009 finding that greenhouse gases were a threat to public health and human welfare as defined in the Clean Air Act. The EPA will also, thankfully, be “reconsidering” the many regulations and other actions it has taken that rely on the finding.
This reconsideration is part of a wider deregulatory drive announced by Zeldin, which is designed to “unleash American energy,” lower the cost of living, and return more power to the states to decide certain environmental matters. Needless to say, this reflects the priorities of an administration that focuses far more on the cost of regulation than did its predecessor, a change much for the better. The intent is to roll back “trillions” in regulatory costs and hidden “taxes” so that cars, for example, should be more affordable (the EPA, of course, has no say on tariffs), as would running a business or starting up new manufacturing.
Among the topics to be reconsidered are EPA regulations designed to “encourage” the switch to electric vehicles. Other items on Zeldin’s agenda include scrapping the EPA’s Environmental Justice and DEI arms, and a technical sounding but important move — “overhauling” the calculation of the “Social Cost of Carbon.” This purports to be the cost of the damage caused by the release of each additional ton of CO2 into the atmosphere. It’s a number that has significant regulatory consequences such as in constructing cost/benefit analyses of new rules. And it has been a thumb on the scale to advance the green agenda. It was assessed at $43 under Barack Obama and at $3-$5 in the first Trump administration — and rose from $51 to $190 under Joe Biden.
