OPINION:
The Environmental Protection Agency is about to bury the unscientific idea that carbon dioxide is a pollutant. Dropping this “endangerment finding” represents the beginning of the end of the great global warming hoax.
Under President Obama, the agency in 2009 declared the molecule that enables plants to grow and humans to breathe an enemy of the planetary thermostat. This decree vested the EPA with the authority to regulate carbon dioxide as if it were a nasty substance equivalent to black soot, lead, radon or asbestos.
But the public never embraced any of the austerity measures peddled as a remedy for this supposed ailment. Consumers didn’t want to pay extra taxes on cars, nor did they endorse the abolition of affordable sources of electricity. Even Senate Democrats couldn’t bring themselves to vote for the Green New Deal.
The package of socialist measures designed to “achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions” flopped 57-0 in 2019 before being crushed 99-0 in the Senate two years later. Undeterred, President Biden implemented the deal’s main provisions administratively. His Inflation Reduction Act allocated billions to the EPA for distribution to any organization claiming to have a “climate solution.”
Nonprofits signed up for cash rewards to spread the global warming gospel. A vast array of public subsidies was lavished on economically unsustainable energy projects. These endeavors had a remarkable tendency to be staffed by the friends and political allies of liberals.
Newly sworn-in EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin pulled the plug on the scheme. “We will review every penny that has gone out the door. The days of irresponsibly shoveling boatloads of cash to far-left activist groups in the name of environmental justice and climate equity are over,” he said earlier this month.
In one instance, an individual who left a company to take a position at the EPA “tossed his former employer $5 billion of your tax dollars,” Mr. Zeldin wrote on X, referring to a large EPA grant the firm received.
Mr. Zeldin’s review discovered a $20 billion EPA slush fund the prior administration had moved into private financial institutions as officials sought to empty the agency piggy bank before President Trump’s team arrived. This dubious use of public resources has been referred to the agency’s inspector general.
While Mr. Biden insisted this green pork would reduce carbon dioxide emissions by the ton, he ignored climate concerns in 2022 as he countenanced the demolition of Nord Stream, the set of natural gas pipelines running through the Baltic Sea. That unprecedented act of industrial sabotage released a “record-shattering amount of methane,” according to a United Nations report published last month.
Researchers estimated that 485,000 tons of the potent greenhouse gas were released from Mr. Biden’s environmental catastrophe. Even that can’t compare with the 20 volcanoes around the globe spewing vast amounts of material known to chill the planet into the atmosphere.
This includes Hawaii’s Kilauea, which is sending sulfur dioxide skyward at a rate of 2,800 tons per day. Mankind’s puny exhalations can’t compare to the fury of Mother Nature.
As Uncle Sam is no longer bankrolling the tellers of climate fairy tales, expect many green nonprofits and crony capitalist businesses to pack up their operations and fade away. The ease with which Democrats pulled off their regulatory coup is now their undoing.
The climate charade ends with a few swipes of Mr. Zeldin’s pen, backed by Mr. Trump’s executive orders.
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