OPINION:
The U.S. government is about to end systemic discrimination against carbon dioxide, and that’s good news for anyone who engages in respiration. Under a newly proposed rule, the Environmental Protection Agency will cease treating carbon dioxide as a poison, repealing the legal foundation of the most breathtaking power grab since the New Deal.
“If finalized, today’s announcement would amount to the largest deregulatory action in the history of the United States,” EPA Secretary Lee Zeldin said at a press conference Tuesday.
At the beginning of President Obama’s term, the EPA assumed unilateral authority to compel automakers, airplane manufacturers and factory owners to do its bidding, even though Congress never approved the move. Bureaucrats twisted a law written in 1970 to contend they could do whatever they pleased to “combat” global warming.
Never mind that “climate scientists” in the 1970s were fretting about the planet being headed toward inevitable catastrophe because of global cooling, not warming. This scare manifested in pop culture with the 1979 hit “London Calling” from British rock band The Clash, which issued the dire warning, “The ice age is coming, the sun’s zooming in.”
Mr. Zeldin objected to his predecessors’ exuberance by asking, “Do you really think that the EPA should be coming up with the many, many, many mental leaps that went into this endangerment finding that took a section of the Clean Air Act and put an extremely creative and unprecedented spin on it?”
If federal lawmakers want to authorize the EPA to regulate carbon dioxide, they can pass legislation saying so. This hasn’t happened because Americans don’t like the idea of paying more at the pump. They hate gas cans that don’t pour properly. They want to buy affordable automobiles, and they dislike today’s crippled household appliances.
Successful climate alarmists such as former Vice President Al Gore don’t have to worry about higher prices or reduced comfort. “Today’s EPA announcement ignores the blindingly obvious reality of the climate crisis and sidelines the EPA’s scientists and lawyers in favor of the interests and profits of the fossil fuel industry,” the jet-set multimillionaire wrote on X from the air-conditioned ease of one of his 10,000-square-foot mansions.
Far from a crisis, greenhouse gases have contributed to a green bonanza. Plants thriving on elevated carbon dioxide levels supercharge our robust farm economy. No country can match what our farmers can do with crops such as corn. Harvests of all kinds have tripled since 1948, delivering $600 billion in annual wealth, according to the Agriculture Department.
Liberals don’t think about the unintended consequences their decrees might have. They claim the scientific high ground and attack anyone who disagrees, but their flimsy assertions can’t withstand scrutiny.
It’s unscientific to act as if a molecule essential for life is a toxin. It’s unscientific to spend decades upon decades stirring hysteria about cataclysmic events that never materialize. The left never holds itself accountable for being wrong.
In a 150-page analysis released Tuesday, the Energy Department examined the data and found the most-used climate models were full of hot air, showing “warming biases in many aspects of their reproduction of the past several decades.”
The lack of predictive ability behind the left’s crusade against carbon dioxide is the strongest clue that it’s a bunch of malarkey. Credit to President Trump for delivering on his promise to consign this regulatory relic to the dustbin of history, where it belongs.
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