EPA's “portal”? No, this is just a sane return to Zealotry Pre-Qealotry – Wattwat?

The Associated Press is ringing an alarm. This time, the horror is that the EPA, under the Trump administration and Chief Executive Lee Zeldin, dares to invoke a long-term provision in the Clean Air Act to allow temporary exemption of newly cast Biden-era industrial emission regulations. The Associated Press described it as betrayal of public health and an attack on the environment. In fact, this is nothing more than repairing sanity.

What exactly happened?

According to the Associated Press, the EPA created an email inbox to allow companies to request exemptions from nine Biden-era regulations, including rules for mercury emissions, ethane oxides and other chemicals. These exemptions are not automatic. They need to be approved by the President of the Clean Air Act and only if two conditions are met: (1) control technology is not widely available and (2) continuous operation serves national security interests.

In short, the government is using clean air in full in writing. This is not Fiat's deregulation, but a legal process set out in the black lettering law. And it's not even new. As the EPA itself pointed out, the Biden administration used the The same exemption mechanism When stricter regulations on ethane oxide were issued last year.

But, as always, facts are optional for the climate narrative industry.

“Polluters' portal” or the lifeline of reality?

Margie Alt, campaign director of the Climate Action campaign, mocked the move as a “gift to the fossil fuel industry” and claimed it represents a “polluter-first agenda.” Jason Rylander from the Center for Biodiversity went further, calling the EPA’s legal mechanism “absurd” and “invitation for pollution.”

Frankly: If you get a five-minute probation from over-regulation, these activists will object. Their logic is theological, not scientific. They believe that any emissions (no matter how important the source is economically important, no matter how sacrifice is. If bankrupt communities are needed to reduce the assumptions of future risks from models of uncertainty margins, then that's it.

We are repeatedly told that mercury causes brain damage and ethane oxide causes cancer, but these statements are without a critical background: exposure thresholds. Modern industrial control has lowered these substances to extremely low levels. The question is not whether these chemicals are harmful Some level, but whether the gradual rate obtained from constant standards justifies the astonishing costs of finance and society.

This is not a “denial”. This is a cost-benefit analysis.

Weaponized regulations, not public health protection

Much of the Biden administration's climate agenda is not about improving air quality. It's about using administrative states to smash politically unfavorable industries. If it sounds extreme, consider the following: The new rules target coal-fired power plants and over 200 chemical facilities (mainly in the U.S. in the red state), although there is little evidence that existing controls fail or their emissions constitute a measurable risk.

These rules are not to protect children, but to kill American energy and manufacturing. Administrator Zeldin just opened legal exit ramps for companies facing new restrictions that threaten their viability.

This is governance, not environmental nihilism.

“Abuse of power” or due process?

Critics such as Vickie Patton of the Environmental Defense Fund believe that the exemption option is “abuse of power.” But when the Biden administration does the same thing, they never raised these objections. Selective anger reveals the real meaning: power, not pollution.

There is a reason for the exemption clause of the Clean Air Act. It recognizes that environmental idealism sometimes has to give way to economic and strategic realities. It is not policy but destructive to declare industrial capacity to close overnight to comply with sudden new tasks.

And don't forget: many of these plants have key ethnic functions, from energy to material supply. The exemption process provides a way to get them online Temporarilybut the technical feasibility has caught up. That's not deregulation. That's common sense.

Greater prospects: bureaucracy transcendence and national interests

The Associated Press was also shocked that administrator Zeldin was considering a large number of staff cuts at the EPA and possibly eliminating its Office of Scientific Research. fear! Without 1,000 federal employees strengthening the same “scientific consensus”, how would we survive, thus extending each climate policy from here to Brussels?

The truth is, EPA has become a political actor. Its “science” increasingly acts as a cape for ideological decision-making. Lowering budgets and pruning over bureaucracy is not anti-science, but anti-IQ.

If the research office is primarily for more statutes, it should be closed. True science flourishes under review. It doesn't require 1,000 paid activists and a billion-dollar budget to be persuasive.

Conclusion: Let's stop pretending to be about “health”

Every regulation has costs, and these costs are important. When new regulations threaten employment, raising consumer prices or the Kneecap strategic industry, we must ask: Are the benefits real? Are risks immediately and quantifiable? Or another round of climate theaters aimed at please non-governmental organizations with donor-based and ideologically motivated?

The EPA's exemption portal is not a “uncovered card”. It was a return to legal, intentional governance – a rare thing in the era of emergency missions and bureaucratic crusades. If the Biden administration pushes these rules under normal democratic review, the resistance to boycott will also be reduced.

Instead, what we have is a passionate regulatory machine that collides with real-world energy, economics and common sense.

Once, reason won.

H/T Steve Milloy

Related