Now the EPA feels the heat
It was Nixon who established the EPA by an EO in December of 1970, later ratified by Congress. It seemed well-intentioned enough:
At its start, the EPA was primarily a technical assistance agency that set goals and standards. Soon, new acts and amendments passed by Congress gave the agency its regulatory authority. A major expansion of the Clean Air Act was approved in December 1970.
EPA staff recall that in the early days there was “an enormous sense of purpose and excitement” and the expectation that “there was this agency which was going to do something about a problem that clearly was on the minds of a lot of people in this country,” leading to tens of thousands of resumes from those eager to participate in the mighty effort to clean up America’s environment.
But power tends to corrupt, or at least grow and grow. From a WSJ editorial:
EPA [under the current Trump administration] is proposing to undo what Congress never gave the agency the authority to do: Regulate greenhouse gases. The Clean Air Act authorizes the EPA to regulate pollutants such as ozone, particulate matter, sulfur dioxide and others that “may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare.”
A 5-4 Supreme Court majority ruled in Massachusetts v. EPA (2007) that greenhouse gases could qualify as pollutants under a capacious reading of the law. Ergo, the EPA must regulate them if it finds they endanger the public. Thus arose the Obama 2009 endangerment finding that undergirds federal climate diktats.
The finding acknowledged scientific uncertainties about the effect of CO2 emissions on temperatures, extreme weather, allergies, diseases and more. But it cherry-picked studies to support the dubious proposition that greenhouse gases pose a clear and present danger to the public.
The gist of it is the administration’s claim that CO2 is not a pollutant like the ones envisioned in the Clean Air Act:
Those pollutants “are subject to regulatory control because they cause local problems depending on concentrations that include nuisances (odor, visibility), damage to plants, and, at high enough exposure levels, toxicological effects in humans,” the report notes. “In contrast, CO2 is odorless, does not affect visibility and has no toxicological effects at ambient levels.”
In other words, higher levels of CO2 in the air from fossil fuels won’t make you sick. This is a distinction Democrats elide when they claim that increases in CO2 will cause dirtier air.
It matters because this expansion to CO2 was the way a host of regulations came to be: electric-vehicle mandates, the retirement of fossil-fuel fired power plants, and proposals to regulate CO2 emissions from such things as leaf blowers and lawn mowers which use fossil fuels.
Obviously, there are legal hurdles ahead.
NOTE: Here’s one of the comments to the article:
It too late anyway. The Republicans have won the extreme weather, inundated coastline, wildfire raged future they future they always wanted. Gee, I wonder why people aren’t lining up to have babies anymore? It is too dangerous and too expensive.
The EPA is probably the best example of an un-accountable, un-elected, run amok massive govt. bureaucracy, headed up and populated by extremist leftist ideologues, that decided to implement laws ( disguised as regulations) that they believed should be imposed upon the entire population of the USA.
Congress is also at fault because they did not do one F’n thing to rein in this out of control federal agency. Of course, Congress just loves these agencies because it allows them to abrogate their law making obligations and fob it over to the bureaucratic state.
We do not need a federal EPA; it should be immediately abolished. Let each state decide how and what their environmental laws should be. Some states will self destruct – CA, NY, ILL, etc – and some will thrive.
@JohnTyler:Let each state decide how and what their environmental laws should be.
Then California is the de facto national standard. They practically are already because it is too much trouble to make stuff just for California (15% of the national economy and 12% of the national population) and something different for everyone else, so they make everything compliant in California.
Exactly correct Niketas. Trump should ban the California CARB regulation scheme under the authority of the Interstate Commerce clause. Although, it would be much better if congress did that. (Or possibly improper for Trump to do it. Is there a lawyer in the house?)
The Supreme court decision mentioned in neo’s 2nd block quote was a terrible decision. CO2 is the only “pollutant” whereby its total elimination would cause virtually all life to cease to exist.
“inundated coastline”
Climate is a religion for the left masses. As I mentioned awhile back, even when presented with data from an actual climate lab (Univ. of Colorado Sea Level Lab) which shows 3.5mm/year rise. They will not accept it. Instead they attacked me for not being a climate scientist, so what I presented HAD to be wrong. Mental pretzels to avoid confronting actual facts that contradict the sacred climate gospel.
About 15 years ago, I took a look at a precis of the EPAs budget and their stated activities and it seemed at that time that the agency should be sorted into about four pieces. One would be a regulatory agency concerned with health-and-safety and lodged in a new department with that mission, another would be an agency concerned with regulation promoting conservation and lodged in the Interior department, another would be an agency concerned with public works projects (site cleanups and the like) and lodged in the Interior department. The last component consisted of grant distribution to state and local government and thus properly eliminated. I think the share was unusually high that year due to the Obama / Pelosi / Schumer porkulus bill of 2009.
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The foundational problem with the EPA’s institutional method was its exclusive reliance on command-and-control regulation. The principal promoter in Congress was Paul Rogers of Florida, a lawyer and the legislation was signed by Richard Nixon, another lawyer. Environmental groups were opposed a priori to tradable permits and Pigou levies and that did not begin to change until about 1989.
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IMO, multi-state watersheds, coastal waters, upper air currents, and such things as chemical and nuclear waste which can generate latent problems and very durable problems are legitimate subjects for federal regulators.
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Climate is a religion for the left masses.
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It isn’t, but attitudes about it have entered the menu of items which influence the self-image of leftoids. Leftist politics is all about status games, and that’s the fuel for one of them. During COVID, mask and vaccines and certain sorts of posited treatments were more fuel for status games.
Let each state decide how and what their environmental laws should be.
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For localized problems, that’ll pass.
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Steven Sailer has for years been having fun with tales of how the preventer class has made use of the Endangered Species Act (which is not, IIRC, enforced by the EPA) to gum up development projects. One of his more memorable posts included a picture of the species to be saved, which was, as he noted, “a dime-sized weed’.
Tonga Eruption Blasted Unprecedented Amount of Water Into Stratosphere. This will cause the type of weather we are experiencing to last for several years but gets almost no coverage from any part of the political spectrum.
Here is good coverage: https://www.nasa.gov/earth/tonga-eruption-blasted-unprecedented-amount-of-water-into-stratosphere/
A faith-based science with a peculiar religious: Pro-Choice, selective, opportunistic bent, and a Green… green embrace of redistributive change schemes, catastrophic anthropogenic immigration reform, and dysfunctional orientations that are first-order forcings of progress (e.g. prices). Who, What do they trust? Let us bray.
John Tyler: “The EPA is probably the best example of an un-accountable, un-elected, run amok massive govt. bureaucracy”
Maybe. But in the case cited above (Massachusetts v. EPA, 2007) the state of MA was suing the EPA to *force* them to regulate greenhouse gases which at the time the EPA was not doing because it was not written into the law.
I looked into how this case was decided. First, MA’s “standing” to bring suit in the first place was based on its claim that greenhouse gases were reducing the land mass of MA due to rising oceans. Pretty far-fetched. Anyway the five who voted in favor of MA were Stevens, Kennedy, Souter, Breyer and Ginsburg – two liberals, two “moderate” Republicans and a supposed conservative (Kennedy). The four who dissented were Scalia, Thomas, Alito and Roberts. It seems Roberts was more reliably conservative up until the infamous Obamacare decision.
Finally it should be noted the decision did not force the EPA to regulate GHG, but did require the EPA to prove why it should not regulate GHG. By the time that came about (2010) Obama had been elected, undoubtedly that had an influence on their reversal of position.
Related to the CO2 regulation mission redux comes a fresh report from the Trump DOE (Chris Wright), evaluating CO2 as a greenhouse gas.
The 144 page report concludes “that U.S. policy actions are expected to have undetectably small direct impacts on the global climate and any effects will emerge only with long delays.”
The Climate Working Group producing this report includes John Christy, Roy Spencer, Steven Koonin, Judith Curry, and (from Canada) Ross Mckitrick — all solid senior scientists and anthropogenic climate change skeptics.
“A Critical Review of Impacts of Greenhouse Gas Emissions on the U.S. Climate”
SUMMARY:https://www.energy.gov/topics/climate
FULL REPORT LINK at bottom of this page
physicsguy: I am/was a “climate scientist”. Doesn’t make a difference to the True Believers. (I’m also a member of the “3%”)
Sea level rise: 2 examples – you don’t need a scuba outfit to visit Plymouth Rock. And Ephesus harbor is well inland now.
“Then California is the de facto national standard….”
Gasoline is now over $8 per gallon in CA, I’m told. And now, having run all of the refiners out of the state, they have a going-out-of-business refinery they’re desperate to find a willing buyer for. They’re wanting to broker the deal themselves !
I can see a tipping point for this model. I can see out-of-state refiners levying a tariff that encapsulates 100% of the refinery reconfiguration costs for an exotic CA formulation. I can see other states deciding, after all, that they no longer need to burn that formulation – that the actual science tells them there’s no science-supported benefit. Then what happens to CA’s leadership in manufacturing and consumables? $15 gasoline?
Once their manufacturing base is exported, the costs can reasonably be shifted. Let CA own their standards 100%.
…a fresh report from the Trump DOE (Chris Wright), evaluating CO2 as a greenhouse gas.
TJ:
Great stuff. WUWT just ran Judith Curry’s personal take on the report, including her participation.
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This Group was assembled in April. I decided to accept Secretary Wright’s invitation for the following reasons:
I was impressed by what Secy Wright wanted to accomplish I was familiar with the other group members and figured I could work with them Most importantly, I saw an opportunity to set the record straight regarding what we know and what we don’t know about climate science, that would reach an important audience.
I was happy to help with this but in the beginning, I confess that I was not at all sure that I would put my name on any report that came out of this. I tend to fly solo, and had not contributed to any multiple authored assessment report in several decades, for a number of reasons. While I had previously met each of my coauthors several times and was familiar with their work, I was not at all sure how this would go. Further, I was concerned about the short deadline for completing the report.
Short summary: all exceeded any hopes and expectations that I had.
–Judith Curry
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2025/07/30/judith-currys-take-new-climate-assessment-report-from-us-doe/
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The group of authors was a real Dream Team. I’ve long had great respect for Judith Curry, whom Scientific American once labeled a “heretic.”
“Gasoline is now over $8 per gallon in CA, I’m told”
It’s bad but not that bad, $4 to $5/gallon here in the Bay Area where it is usually higher than the rest of the state. Has been stable recently though some new state regulations were supposed to raise it on July 1. Of course would not be surprised if that kicks in and sends it skyrocketing. Maybe Gruesome senses it would not help his Presidential campaign?
DT, physicsguy – the “warmists” will love being buried under a sheet of ice at the next glaciation lol
In the 90s the usually rigorous james burke of connection fame got roped into this tract ‘after the warming’ which seemed to be of the mann-oppenheimer school of polemics which was being employed in the public schools nearly 20 years later on a double bill with ‘earth in the lurch’ as rush dubbed it
This thinking so called permeated the clerks at the Court that allowed that ridiculous finding that C0 2 was a pollutant get through this also underlay the phasing out of the incandescent light bulb for less efficient and toxic mercury bulbs and a host of anti competitive measures
Which probably led to the oil spike that popped the subprime bubble