JENNY BETH MARTIN: Trump EPA Poised To Tear Down Key Pillar Of Climate Change Religion’s Sacred Temple

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin’s announcement last week that he will reconsider the Environmental Protection Agency’s 2009 “Endangerment Finding” — following through on President Trump’s Day One executive order directing the federal government to “unleash American ⚡Energy” — may be the most important thing to come out of the Trump administration yet.

“Today is the greatest day of deregulation our nation has seen,” Zeldin said, making his announcement. “We are driving a dagger straight into the heart of the climate-change religion.”

He’s right. The 2009 endangerment finding by then-EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson is the bedrock of current greenhouse gas environmental regulation in the United States. According to Jackson’s finding, “six greenhouse gases taken in combination endanger both the public health and the public welfare of current and future generations,” and, further, “the combined emissions of these greenhouse gases from new motor vehicles and new motor vehicle engines contribute to the greenhouse gas air pollution that endangers public health and welfare under” the Clean Air Act.

The endangerment finding undergirds all sorts of regulations issued over the last 16 years — among others, for example, seven vehicle regulations that, says Zeldin, have “an aggregate cost of more than one trillion dollars, according to figures in EPA’s own regulatory impact analyses.” For instance, based on the 2009 finding, the EPA in 2015 issued standards limiting carbon pollution from new and existing fossil fuel-fired power plants, and in 2024 issued standards limiting carbon pollution from vehicle tailpipes.

Government bureaucrats practiced in the art of wielding power know they don’t actually have to extort private sector actors to get them to change behavior. The bureaucratic version of, “Nice company there, it’d be a shame if something happened to it” will suffice. When it comes to this kind of subtle power-wielding, the EPA’s bureaucrats are past masters.

For example, the new tailpipe emissions standards released last year by the EPA don’t outlaw the sale of gas-powered cars and trucks entirely; instead, the new rule “increasingly limits the amount of pollution allowed from tailpipes over time so that, by 2032, more than half the new cars sold in the United States would most likely be zero-emissions vehicles in order for carmakers to meet the standards.” In other words, the EPA didn’t ban gas-powered cars outright; instead, it set an increasingly difficult tailpipe emissions standard for a gas-powered car to meet, and let auto manufacturing executives come to their own conclusions about the necessary composition of the vehicle inventories they put out for sale.

Not surprisingly, as they’ve seen Washington bureaucrats wield more and more power via regulation, carmakers have been taking their cues less and less from the market, and more and more from the decisions made by Washington bureaucrats — and, more and more specifically, from the bureaucrats at the EPA. So auto manufacturers reconfigure their inventories to meet the “demand” from Washington, rather than the actual demand from the market. It’s no wonder that General Motors remains “all in” on EV production, despite the fact that the company loses money on every electric vehicle it sells.

(And here’s a question for any EPA bureaucrat: How much more do cars cost today because Detroit isn’t making the cars we wanted in the first place? General Motors isn’t making enough of the cars people do want, because it’s too busy making cars the market says people do not want. But those are the cars EPA bureaucrats want GM to make, so GM makes them, and sells them a loss. Sheesh.)

Zeldin’s decision to look again at the endangerment finding is a huge deal. Reconsidering — and eventually overturning — the endangerment finding, and all the burdensome regulations that flow from it, could do more to unlock the American economy than even enacting a massive tax cut. It’s the kind of thing that could make a presidency.

Importantly, it’s not just the lifting of the regulatory burden that’s so crucial to the success of the Trump agenda. Overturning the endangerment finding wouldn’t just unleash the economy, it would also restore the rule of law, and right the wrongs committed by the Obama and Biden administrations when they used the endangerment finding to bypass the Congress and enact their anti-fossil-fuels agenda via regulation instead of legislation. (After all, accomplishing a policy agenda item via regulation is so much, well, easier than having to maneuver legislation through two chambers composed of hundreds of political actors who each have their own constituencies that must be taken into account.)

Moreover, overturning the endangerment finding would shift power of environmental regulation from the federal government back to state governments, where it belongs.

Returning power and authority to the states so they can make more of the decisions on environmental matters would foster competition, which encourages innovation, which increases consumer choice, which incentivizes investment, which boosts economic growth, which raises standards of living. All Americans would benefit from that.

President Trump chose well when he picked Zeldin to implement Trump’s agenda at the Environmental Protection Agency. Zeldin’s aggressive implementation of Trump’s Day One executive order has the potential to unleash the American economy. Here’s hoping for their combined success on this important front.

Jenny Beth Martin is Honorary Chairman of Tea Party Patriots Action

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