The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is about to bury the unscientific idea that carbon dioxide is a pollutant. Dropping this “endangerment finding” represents the beginning of the end for the great global warming hoax.
Under President Barack Obama, the agency in 2009 declared the molecule that enables plants to grow and humans to breathe an enemy of the planetary thermostat. This decree vested the EPA with authority to regulate CO2 as if it were a nasty substance equivalent to black soot, lead, radon or asbestos.
But the public never embraced any of the austerity measures peddled as a remedy for this supposed ailment. Consumers didn’t want to pay extra taxes on cars, nor did they endorse the abolition of affordable sources of electricity. Even Senate Democrats couldn’t bring themselves to vote for the Green New Deal.
The package of socialist measures designed to “achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions” flopped 57-0 in 2019 before being crushed 99-0 in the Senate two years later. Undeterred, President Joe Biden implemented the deal’s main provisions administratively. His Inflation Reduction Act allocated billions to the EPA for distribution to any organization claiming to have a “climate solution.”
Nonprofits signed up for cash rewards for spreading the global-warming gospel. A vast array of public subsidies was lavished on economically unsustainable energy projects. These endeavors had a remarkable tendency to be staffed by the friends and political allies of progressives.
Newly sworn-in EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin pulled the plug on the scheme. “We will review every penny that has gone out the door. The days of irresponsibly shoveling boat loads of cash to far-left, activist groups in the name of environmental justice and climate equity are over,” he said earlier this month.
In one instance, an individual who left a company to take a position at the EPA “tossed his former employer $5 billion of your tax dollars,” Mr. Zeldin wrote on X, referring to a large EPA grant the firm received.
Mr. Zeldin’s review discovered a $20 billion EPA slush fund the prior administration had moved into private financial institutions as officials sought to empty the agency piggy bank before President Trump’s team arrived. This dubious use of public resources has been referred to the agency’s inspector general.
Hellbound and Down 