RUTHFULLY YOURS

During the Barack Obama presidency, a poisonous seed was planted by bureaucrats at the Environmental Protection Agency to enable radical regulation of CO2 emissions, eventually strangling the economy.  That seed was an official “endangerment finding” (E.F.) that declared CO2 a “dangerous pollutant” — absurd on its face, since CO2 is necessary for life.

Writing at Townhall, Paul Driessen explains how the roots that have sprouted from the poisonous seed can and must be pulled up by action from President Trump:

[T]here has never been any formal, public review of the EF conclusion or of the secretive process EPA employed to ensure the result of its “analysis” could only be “endangerment” — and no awkward questions or public hearings would get in the way.

Review, transparency and accountability may finally be on the way, however, in the form of potential Executive Branch actions. If they occur — and they certainly should — both are likely to find that there is no valid scientific basis for the EF, and EPA violated important federal procedural rules in rendering its predetermined EF outcome. (One could even say the EF was obtained primarily because of prosecutorial misconduct, a kangaroo court proceeding, and scientific fraud.) Failure to examine and reverse the EF would mean it hangs like Damocles’ sword over the USA, To the consternation and outrage of climate alarmists, keep-fossil-fuels-in-the-ground radicals, and predictable politicians and pundits, President Trump may soon appoint a Presidential Committee on Climate Change, to review “dangerous manmade climate change” reports by federal agencies awaiting the next climate-focused president.

Also important, as Driessen explains, is a petition to the EPA filed by the Competitive Enterprise Institute:

… asking that the agency stop utilizing and relying on the EF — and instead subject the finding to a proper “high level” peer review, as required by the Information Quality Act.

The fact that proper procedures were not followed in reaching the E.F. is the opening that can be used to uproot it and prevent it from being employed in the future by any warmist true believer president to issue bureaucratic fiats limiting energy availability.  I had hoped for a much quicker presidential committee to be formed.  With 2020 approaching, time is a serious consideration.