Out of masterresource
By Robert Bradley Jr.
“A more conservative EPA … will prevent unnecessary spending by the regulated community [and] … bring savings to the American taxpayer. Improved transparency will serve as an important control … [to] “Bring concrete environmental improvements to the American people in the form of cleaner air, cleaner water, and healthier soils.” (– Heritage Foundation, Project 2025)
Last week's post examined the energy section of the Heritage Foundation's 922-page Mandate for Leadership: 2025. This post reproduces the environment section of the same document (1,200 words), which calls for a return to the basics of clean air and water – and away from the cancer of climate policy as an ecological problem.
As discussed below, EPA must prioritize achievable, definable environmental improvements and not engage in wasteful, pointless climateism and forced energy transition.
The challenge in creating a conservative EPA will be to balance legitimate skepticism about an agency that has long been able to be co-opted by the left for political ends with the need to implement the agency's true function: protecting public health and the environment in cooperation with the states. In addition, the EPA must be reoriented away from attempts to make it an all-powerful energy and land-use policymaker and toward its congressionally authorized role as an environmental regulator.
Not surprisingly, under the Biden administration, the EPA has returned to the same top-down coercive approach that characterized the Obama administration, reinstating unattainable standards designed to facilitate the “transition” away from politically unpopular industries and technologies and toward the Biden administration’s preferred alternatives. This approach is most evident in the Biden administration’s assault on the energy sector, as the government uses its regulatory power to make coal, oil, and natural gas very expensive and increasingly inaccessible to operate, while forcing the economy to switch to and rely on unreliable renewable energy….
As a result of this approach, we have seen the return of costly, job-killing regulations that weaken the economy and increase bureaucracy but do little to address complex environmental problems. In some cases, these policies even undermine environmental protection efforts by moving industries overseas to countries where environmental compliance is seriously lacking – if any meaningful regulation exists at all. At the same time, the costs and staffing of agencies have increased significantly….
Compared to the Obama administration, there is one key difference in the Biden administration's approach: In a concerted effort to reduce congressional oversight, the position of EPA administrator has been eclipsed by the appointment of several “climate czars” in the Biden White House. In fact, current EPA administrator Michael Regan, who has a reputation as a well-meaning, generally capable former civil servant, has been shut out of the political cycle and served mainly as a convenient distraction from the EPA's expansive, costly, and economy-destroying agenda.
A co-opted mission. The EPA has been a breeding ground for the expansion of federal government influence and control across the economy. Embedded activists have sought to circumvent legal restrictions to pursue a global, climate-related agenda. They sought to achieve that agenda by implementing costly policies that would otherwise not have gained the necessary political traction in Congress. Many EPA actions under liberal administrations simply ignored the will of Congress and instead catered to the goals and desires of politically connected activists.
Pursuing this global agenda has distracted the agency from fulfilling its core mission, creating a backlog of missed regulatory deadlines and sometimes even leading to preventable environmental disasters. During the Obama administration, for example, the United States experienced two of its worst environmental disasters in decades, including the Flint, Michigan, water crisis in 2014 and the Gold King Mine oil spill in 2015.
In addition to causing such immediate and tangible harm in diverse communities, an EPA characterized by activism and disregard for the law has created uncertainty in the regulated community, vindictive enforcement, weighted analysis, increased costs, and reduced confidence in the agency's ultimate actions. Although the U.S. environmental story is very positive, there has been a return to fear-based rhetoric within the agency, particularly with regard to the perceived threat of climate change.
Misrepresenting the state of our environment in general, and the actual damage that can reasonably be attributed to climate change in particular, is a favorite tool of the left to scare the American public into accepting its ineffective, liberty-restricting regulations, limited property rights, and exorbitant costs. In effect, the Biden EPA has once again presented the American people with a false choice: choosing between a healthy environment and a strong, growing economy.
Political reform (“back to basics”)
The structure and mission of the EPA should be severely limited to reflect the principles of cooperative federalism and limited government. This requires a comprehensive restructuring and rationalization of the agency to address:
- Governance. EPA should build serious relationships with state and local agencies and take a more supportive role, sharing resources and expertise and recognizing that the primary role in making decisions about the environment lies with the people who live there.
- Responsible progress. Regulatory efforts should focus on addressing concrete environmental problems with practical, low-cost and affordable solutions to clean air, water and soil. Results should be measured and tracked using simple, publicly available metrics.
- Optimized processDuplicate, wasteful, or redundant programs that do not specifically support the Agency's mission should be eliminated, and a structured management program should be developed to assist state and local governments in protecting public health and the environment.
- Healthy, thriving communities. EPA should consider the economic costs of its actions to local communities and reduce them as much as possible to help them grow and prosper.
- Compliance before enforcement. EPA should maintain cooperative relationships with the regulated community, particularly small businesses, and prioritize compliance over enforcement.
- Transparent science and regulatory analysis. EPA should publish and comment on all scientific studies and analyses that support regulatory decisions.
Climate change
- Remove the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program (GHGRP) for all source categories that are not currently regulated. The overall reporting program places a significant burden on small businesses and companies that are not regulated. This is either a pointless burden or a sword of Damocles for future regulation, and neither is appropriate.
- Establish a system with reasonable timelines to update the 2009 risk assessment.
- Establish a significant emission rate (SER) for greenhouse gases (GHGs).
Necessary reforms: priorities from day one
- Inform Congress that EPA will not undertake any current or planned scientific activities that do not have clear and current congressional authorization. This priority should be highlighted in the President's first budget request.
- The new President's Inauguration Day regulatory review/freeze policy should avoid exceptions for EPA actions. This freeze should explicitly include quasi-regulatory actions, including assessments, findings, standards, and guidelines that have not gone through the notice and comment process and may date back years.
- Pause review of all contracts over $100,000 with a strong focus on key external peer reviews and regulatory models.
- Call on the public to identify areas where EPA has assessed risks inconsistently, failed to use the best science, or engaged in research misconduct.
- Avoid using unauthorized regulatory inputs such as the social cost of carbon, black box and proprietary models, and unrealistic climate scenarios, including those based on the Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 8.5.
DIPLOMA
A more conservative EPA, guided by the policies described in this chapter, will lead to a better environmental future without unintended consequences. It will prevent unnecessary spending by the regulated community and enable investments in the economic development and job creation that are critical to thriving communities.
Reducing the size and scope of the EPA will save the American taxpayer money. Improved transparency will serve as an important check and balance to ensure that the agency's mission is not distorted or abused for political purposes. Importantly, a conservative EPA will deliver tangible environmental improvements to the American people in the form of cleaner air, cleaner water, and healthier soil.
Critical commentary
The above reform has many positive aspects, but the policy document is slow to cut the roots of a poisoned tree. Specifically, the new president should end the EPA's climate mission entirely, withdraw the United States from the Paris Climate Agreement, and cease funding and participation in the International Energy Agency. The infamous Endangerment Finding must be reviewed and reversed, and the platform's requirement to “set a significant emissions rate (SER) for greenhouse gases (GHGs)” should be removed.
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