It has been awhile now, but the Trump Administration of Disaster is taking the disastrous step of overturning (or un-finding, maybe) the endangerment finding of climate change.
I'm going with the Daily Mail on this one, but there's been a lot of reporting on it, naturally.
" "EPA administrator Lee Zeldin has reportedly lobbied to strike down the scientific finding so the White House can more easily repeal regulations which fight climate change"We can only hope so. Because here's the follow-up:
Earlier this month, the Trump Administration notified more than 1,100 EPA employees that they could be dismissed 'immediately' at any time.
That group included scientists and experts who research and enforce policies related to air pollution, hazardous waste cleanup, and environmental emergency response.
Members of two influential EPA advisory committees which provide scientific guidance to the head of the agency were ousted in January.
Myron Ebell, the leader of Trump's EPA transition team during the president's first term, noted that striking down the endangerment finding would likely make overturning Joe Biden's climate policies a smoother process.
'If you want to go back and redo one of these rules, you're going to have a very spirited court battle if you ignore the endangerment finding,' Ebell said. 'So I think they really need to do this.'
However, Sean Donahue, an attorney for environmental groups which support the endangerment finding, believes any effort to repeal the 2009 scientific finding would be struck down in court."
" “The embers of the fires in LA are barely out, and people are still struggling to recover their homes and their livelihoods in North Carolina,” said David Doniger, senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council, at a rally in front of the U.S. Capitol on Thursday. “And here we have the Trump administration telling the country’s oil, gas and coal magnates that they are free to keep spewing dangerous pollution into the atmosphere.”
He and other environmental advocates argue the Trump administration is likely to lose in court if it tries to challenge climate science. As a peer-reviewed study six years ago put it, “the amount, diversity, and sophistication of the evidence has increased markedly” for every aspect of the EPA’s 2009 finding on the dangers of greenhouse gases.
Many environmental law experts anticipate the Trump administration will aim to overturn the endangerment finding without a fight over science. Instead, Trump’s team could make the case for striking down the endangerment finding strictly on its interpretation of the law. Zeldin signaled as much during his confirmation hearing, when he agreed that carbon dioxide and methane were heat-trapping gases, but raised doubts about EPA’s mandate to act on them."
I wish I could see watching this battle was going to be fun, but it won't be. However, it will be interesting.
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