EPA chief Lee Zeldin recently announced a reversal of “green” policies that were likely to put Detroit out of business and stymie our country’s dominance of 21st-century industries.
Where is Greta Thunberg? Where are the enormous protests that should be greeting President Donald Trump’s assault on Joe Biden’s onerous climate mandates? Is climate activism dying?
EPA chief Lee Zeldin recently announced a massive reversal of “green” policies that were likely to put Detroit out of business and stymie our country’s dominance of 21st century industries. He is eliminating or modifying 31 environmental regulations that would have, at the least, raised prices and limited choices for consumers. At the worst, they would have had us follow Europe toward sky-high power costs and stagnant growth.
Many were programs adopted by the Joe Biden White House in an effort to attract funding and votes from leftist climate activists. None would have moved the needle on global emissions; for that to happen, China and India would have to climb aboard. Those countries account for roughly 40% of global emissions, while the U.S. contributes less than 14%. So far, China and India have only paid lip service to international rule-making that would curb American growth and prosperity, while continuing to build more coal-fired power plants.
The rules tossed by Zeldin, who called the overhaul the “biggest deregulatory action in U.S. history,” include redoing the regulations slapped on power plants by Biden’s Clean Power Plan 2.0, tossing many of the restrictions currently “throttling the oil and gas industry,” reviewing Obama’s “endangerment finding” and reconsidering Biden’s “backdoor EV mandates.”
He also vowed to terminate the $20 billion in controversial grants shoveled out the door in the final weeks of the Biden administration.
All these measures are consequential, including possibly ditching Obama’s “endangerment finding,” which deems greenhouse gases a pollutant subject to agency regulation.
Forbes writes: “The national and global impacts stemming from EPA’s 2009 endangerment finding are impossible to overstate,” as it has “served as the foundation for a massive expansion of EPA authority, enabling it to impose its will into most aspects of American life.”
That expansion of authority shows up in Biden’s Clean Power Plant Rule, concluded last April, which would have mandated adoption of carbon capture techniques by existing coal and new gas-fired power plants by 2032, technology which is not even commercially viable today.
This foolhardy attack on both coal and natural gas would have driven greater reliance on unreliable renewable energy sources like wind and solar, likely leaving the U.S. with inadequate electricity to meet the demands of emerging industries like AI. One of the reasons many international companies are promising to increase their investments in the U.S is the availability of abundant cheap energy, something Zeldin’s move will help guarantee.
Note that Biden’s rule governing power plants was an extension of a similar Obama-era regulation which was rejected by the Supreme Court in 2022. The court found the EPA had gone beyond its authority in attempting to restructure the country’s entire power system in favor of renewable energy.
Another critical change is the reversal of the “backdoor EV mandates” that supercharged efforts to get rid of gas-powered cars. Specifically, Zeldin is committed to rewriting the tailpipe and emissions regulations for cars and trucks that would have required 56% of new vehicles sold by 2032 to be electric. Since less than 9% of new car sales last year were EVs, that would have been quite a jolt.
Our electric grid is not ready to cope with such a massive shift; neither are consumers, who are still concerned about the inconvenience and costs of EVs A Pew poll last year even showed Americans unconvinced that EVs are better for the environment.
Most worrisome: Detroit automakers, which continue to lose money on EVs, are not ready for that change. The Big Three automakers will face even steeper competition ahead. China’s automaker BYD has become the world’s largest EV producer, just surpassing Tesla. While the company does not yet sell cars in the U.S., it announced in 2023 its intention to open a plant in Mexico, which would produce around 150,000 cars per year. BYD said it would not try to sell in the U.S., a promise many found unlikely.
Chinese EVs are cheaper and better than those made in the U.S. and in Europe. EV imports from China into the EU grew more than tenfold in value terms from 2020 to 2023. In response, European authorities imposed tariffs on car imports from China for the first time.
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Climate zealots may be right that EVs are the future, but for the present, Detroit is better off making profitable cars that Americans actually want to buy.
Millions of people protested about climate change in 2019, one of the largest global demonstrations ever. Demonstrations have continued, but at a more modest level. Today, even after Zeldin’s announcement, and although climate groups are suing to stop his sensible measures, public outrage seems muted. Many are rejecting the high-handed climate mandates which have hurt Europe and threaten the U.S.
Voters have become more skeptical about the climate apocalypse routinely forecast by activists like Al Gore (the end of polar bears) and New York Democrat Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (“The world is gonna end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change…”)
Polling from Pew Research last fall showed that the country was split on whether Biden’s climate policies helped or hurt the country, and that “51% of U.S. adults say they’ve felt suspicious of the groups pushing for action on climate change.” That skepticism will doubtless have grown in the wake of revelations that billions of dollars allocated by Congress in the Inflation Reduction Act flowed to Democrat-aligned NGOs in the final weeks of the Biden administration. And, that some of those newly-formed organizations have little history of climate activism, like the $2 billion that flowed to Democratic activist and politician Stacey Abrams.
Voters elected Donald Trump last year because he embraced common sense. Dialing back some of Joe Biden’s extreme climate diktats is just that.
