In yet another return to sanity, the Trump administration is now planning to roll back a key Obama administration climate “finding” that was used to regulate the daylights out of energy production in the United States. That Obama-era regulation identified six greenhouse gases requiring regulation, which included CO2.
President Donald Trump’s administration is poised to walk back an Obama-era greenhouse gas finding that serves as a lynchpin for justifying climate regulations across the country on Wednesday.
The 2009 “endangerment finding” identifies six greenhouse gases that the Obama administration said pose “a threat to public health and welfare.” That harm finding was then used to justify sweeping climate regulations from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), such as raising fuel economy standards and limiting power plant emissions, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday.
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin hailed the move as cutting through government red tape in an interview with the Journal.
Those regulations, of course, were like putting a sea anchor on the economy. It seems Democrats never saw a scheme for jacking up energy costs that they didn’t like, and the Obama people were no exceptions. Now we’re seeing some of the stupidity reversed.
The Journal reports that the final rule will be made public later this week and is set to eliminate requirements to measure, report, certify and comply with federal greenhouse-gas emission standards for motor vehicles. The rollback does not yet affect power plants or oil and gas facilities.
“More energy drives human flourishing,” Interior Secretary Doug Burgum told the outlet. “Energy abundance is the thing that we have to focus on, not regulating certain forms of energy out.”