This is according to documents reviewed by Democrats on the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology.
Secretary Zeldin said he wants to eliminate 65 percent of the agency. The plan was presented to the White House for review. It calls for dissolving the agency’s largest department, the Office of Research and Development. Up to 75% of those working there would be laid off.
The remaining staff members would be placed elsewhere within the EPA. They would provide oversight and align with administration priorities.
Molly Vaseliou, an EPA spokeswoman, said that the agency is taking ” exciting steps as we enter the next phase of organizational improvements. We are committed to enhancing our ability to deliver clean air, water, and land for all Americans.” She said no decisions have been made yet. “We are actively listening to employees at all levels to gather ideas on how to increase efficiency and ensure that the EPA is up to date and as effective as ever,” Vaseliou said.
Zoe Lofgren a Democrat of California, said that the agency office was created by congressional status,e and it’s illegal to dissolve it.
This office is the one that provides all of this so-called research that gives them the power to do what they do to further the climate scam.
Other significant policy changes Zeldin said he planned include:
Rolling back restrictions on carbon dioxide emissions from power plants. Currently, the E.P.A. requires existing coal-burning power plants and new gas plants built in the United States to cut their greenhouse-gas emissions by 90 percent by 2039.
Rewriting tailpipe pollution standards that were designed to ensure that the majority of new passenger cars and light trucks sold in the United States are all-electric or hybrids by 2032.
Easing limits on mercury emissions from power plants, as well as restrictions on soot and haze from burning coal. A Biden-era rule had aimed to slash by 70 percent emissions from coal-burning power plants of mercury, which has been linked to developmental damage in children.
Greatly reducing the “social cost” of carbon, an economic estimate of the damage caused by each additional ton of carbon dioxide emissions in the atmosphere. That figure plays a significant role in weighing the costs and benefits of regulating industries.
The Endangerment Finding
The EPA is considering withdrawing a scientific study that shaped modern climate policy. The most significant of the agency’s regulatory changes is an effort to revise a 2009 legal opinion known as the E.P.A. “endangerment finding,” which concluded that rising greenhouse gas emissions are a danger to public health.
The finding gives the agency the authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.
Background
The Supreme Court ruled in Massachusetts v. EPA (2007) that greenhouse gases qualify as pollutants under the Clean Air Act. The EPA must regulate pollutants that can “reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare.” Obama’s Administration in 2009 determined that greenhouse gases do.
The Obama endangerment finding undergirds EPA limits on CO2 emissions from power plants, autos, and trucks and methane fees on oil and gas companies, among other rules. The Obama and Biden administrations have used the findings to bypass Congress to advance their anti-fossil fuel agenda.
The first Trump EPA revised the Obama CO2 regulations to make them less punitive. Then, the Biden team reversed course, making the Obama rules even more punitive.
The Climate Lobby
The climate lobby now says Mr. Zeldin doesn’t have legal authority to rescind the endangerment finding. But agencies re-examine past decisions all the time. According to the WSJ Editorial Board, Mr. Zeldin can reconsider EPA’s greenhouse gas findings in light of new or other evidence.
Most of the science cited in the Obama endangerment finding is debatable. For example, claiming climate change will harm U.S. agriculture and increase the size and frequency of wildfires is unproven. The finding that U.S. CO2 emissions will directly harm Americans is even more tenuous.
Unlike pollutants explicitly covered by the Clean Air Act, CO2 emissions don’t affect local air quality. Other factors, like cloud cover, have an intermediate impact on global temperatures. Curbing CO2 emissions in the U.S. will have a scant impact on Americans, especially as India and China emit with abandon.
Justice Antonin Scalia noted as much in his Mass. v. EPA dissent: “Regulating the buildup of CO2 and other greenhouse gases in the upper reaches of the atmosphere . . . is not akin to regulating the concentration of some substance that is polluting the air.” Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito also dissented.
Withdrawing the endangerment finding could tee up a lawsuit that allows the High Court to reconsider Mass. v. EPA. Under its major questions doctrine, significant executive actions require express Congressional authority. However, Congress never authorized the EPA to regulate CO2 emissions.
The IRA language
According to the WSJ, Democrats did insert language in the Inflation Reduction Act claiming greenhouse gas emissions are “air pollutants.” Democrats hope to use it to mount a legal challenge. However, the IRA doesn’t expressly require or authorize EPA to regulate greenhouse gases. Republicans in Congress could also help Mr. Zeldin by using this year’s budget bill to repeal the IRA spending provisions. He shouldn’t count on Congress if past is prologue.
Some energy companies warn that withdrawing the endangerment finding could make them vulnerable to lawsuits by states and localities. But oil and gas producers already face dozens of lawsuits in state courts.
However, withdrawing the finding wouldn’t change the Court’s fundamental holding that “it is primarily the office of Congress, not the federal courts, to prescribe national policy in areas of special federal interest” like climate. This is all the more reason why the Obama-Biden EPA power grab endangers the constitutional separation of powers by usurping Congress’s authority, says the WSJ Editorial Board.
This is one fight worth having.
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