{"id":338112,"date":"2024-07-31T17:13:49","date_gmt":"2024-07-31T15:13:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=338112"},"modified":"2024-07-31T17:13:51","modified_gmt":"2024-07-31T15:13:51","slug":"project-2025-environmental-policy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=338112","title":{"rendered":"Project 2025: Environmental Policy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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From Master Resource<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Robert Bradley Jr.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u201cA more conservative EPA \u2026 will prevent unnecessary expenditures by the regulated community [and] \u2026 deliver savings to the American taxpayer. Improved transparency will serve as an important check \u2026 [to] deliver tangible environmental improvements to the American people in the form of cleaner air, cleaner water, and healthier soils.\u201d ( \u2013 Heritage Foundation, Project 2025)<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Last week\u2019s post examined the energy section<\/a> of the Heritage Foundation\u2019s 922-page Mandate for Leadership: 2025<\/a>. This post reproduces the environmental section of the same document (1,200 words) calling for a return to the basics of clean air and water\u2013and away from the cancer of climate policy as ecological.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As explained below, EPA needs to prioritize achievable, definable environmental improvement, not engage in wasteful, futile climatism and forced energy transformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The challenge of creating a conservative EPA will be to balance justified skepticism toward an agency that has long been amenable to being co-opted by the Left for political ends against the need to implement the agency\u2019s true function: protecting public health and the environment in cooperation with states. Further, the EPA needs to be realigned away from attempts to make it an all-powerful energy and land use policymaker and returned to its congressionally sanctioned role as environmental regulator.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not surprisingly, the EPA under the Biden Administration has returned to the same top-down, coercive approach that defined the Obama Administration. There has been a reinstitution of unachievable standards designed to aid in the \u201ctransition\u201d away from politically disfavored industries and technologies and toward the Biden Administration\u2019s preferred alternatives. This approach is most obvious in the Biden Administration\u2019s assault on the energy sector as the Administration uses its regulatory might to make coal, oil, and natural gas operations very expensive and increasingly inaccessible while forcing the economy to build out and rely on unreliable renewables\u2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a consequence of this approach, we see the return of costly, job-killing regulations that serve to depress the economy and grow the bureaucracy but do little to address, much less resolve, complex environmental problems. In some instances, these actions even work to undermine environmental efforts as they push industries overseas to countries whose enforcement of pollution-control requirements is seriously deficient\u2014if indeed they have any meaningful requirements at all. Meanwhile, agency costs and staffing have increased significantly\u2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Compared to the Obama Administration, there is one key difference in the Biden Administration\u2019s approach: In a concerted effort to diminish congressional oversight, the position of EPA Administrator has been overshadowed by the creation of multiple \u201cClimate Czars\u201d at the Biden White House. In effect, current EPA Administrator Michael Regan, who has a reputation as a well-meaning, generally capable former state official, has been left out of the political loop, serving mostly as a pleasant distraction from EPA\u2019s expansive, costly, and economy-destroying agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Co-opted Mission<\/strong>. The EPA has been a breeding ground for expansion of the federal government\u2019s influence and control across the economy. Embedded activists have sought to evade legal restraints in pursuit of a global, climate-themed agenda, aiming to achieve that agenda by implementing costly policies that otherwise have failed to gain the requisite political traction in Congress. Many EPA actions in liberal Administrations have simply ignored the will of Congress, aligning instead with the goals and wants of politically connected activists.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pursuit of this globally focused agenda has distracted the agency from fulfilling its core mission, thereby creating a backlog of missed statutory deadlines, and at times has even led to preventable environmental disasters. During the Obama Administration, for example, the U.S. experienced two of the worst environmental Environmental Protection Agency disasters in decades, including the Flint, Michigan, water crisis in 2014 and the Gold King Mine spill in 2015.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Beyond creating such immediate and tangible harm in various communities, an EPA led by activism and a disregard for the law has generated uncertainty in the regulated community, vendetta-driven enforcement, weighted analytics, increased costs, and diminished trust in final agency actions. Although the U.S. environmental story is very positive, there has been a return to fear-based rhetoric within the agency, especially as it pertains to the perceived threat of climate change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mischaracterizing the state of our environment generally and the actual harms reasonably attributable to climate change specifically is a favored tool that the Left uses to scare the American public into accepting their ineffective, liberty-crushing regulations, diminished private property rights, and exorbitant costs. In effect, the Biden EPA has once again presented a false choice to the American people: that they have to choose between a healthy environment and a strong, growing economy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Policy Reform (\u201cBack to Basics\u201d)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

EPA\u2019s structure and mission should be greatly circumscribed to reflect the principles of cooperative federalism and limited government. This will require significant restructuring and streamlining of the agency to reflect the following:<\/p>\n\n\n\n