EPA Launches Biggest Deregulatory Action in U.S. History

https://www.epa.gov/newsreleases/epa-launches-biggest-deregulatory-action-us-history

by latchkey • 1 year ago

57 62 1 year ago

Does this mean companies can now be trusted to not pollute the environment of their own volition without rules and oversight? I didn't know we were that advanced as a civilization.

netsharc• 1 year ago

I think it means they're free to do things like things that lead to Bhopal or Exxon Valdez disasters, because adhering to regulations cost the bottom line!

Maybe I'm fantasizing, but isn't there some country with some law that companies operating there are required to buy from environmentally friendly suppliers...

jet_32951• 1 year ago

"It's one thing to burn down the outhouse and quite another to install indoor plumbing." - P.J. O'Rourke

Havoc• 1 year ago

So basically pollution free-for-all?

stevep98• 1 year ago

They just a hyphen. The motto used to be pollution-free for all!

sega_sai• 1 year ago

According to NYT [1](I can't force myself to watch this), "Nowhere in the video did he refer to protecting the environment or public health, twin tenets that have guided the agency since its founding in 1970."

I am not sure what's the point of EPA at all, if it's goals now are create jobs etc.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/12/climate/epa-zeldin-rollba...

jfengel2• 1 year ago

That is the goal, yet. The EPA is on the chopping block, right after the Education Department.

klooney2• 1 year ago

Working with states and tribes to resolve massive backlog with State Implementation Plans and Tribal Implementation Plans that the Biden-Harris Administration refused to resolve (SIPs/TIPs)

What's up with that?

klooney2• 1 year ago

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/epa-approves-texas-clean-a...

Sounds better for the environment than I'd feared...

throwaway42202• 1 year ago

Curious to hear someone in favor of this. It’s sounding really bad.

JumpCrisscross3• 1 year ago

Curious to hear someone in favor of this

We have lots of natural gas, it burns cleaner than coal, and we're strongly embracing LNG exports. Europe doesn't have much natural gas, which would make nuclear a good counterpart to solar, but Greenpeace doesn't like that, so they'll wind up buying our gas.

(The best I can come up with for these specific rule changes is trashing the market for carbon credits neuters a significant cash stream for Tesla.)

throwaway42202• 1 year ago

I have heard that LNG has a larger carbon footprint than coal vs natural gas which is much better

rainsford2• 1 year ago

To be clear I'm very not in favor, but the steelman version of the argument is that environmental regulations are well meaning but draw the line at being too restrictive rather than balancing clean air and water with the reality that human activity produces some unnatural byproducts and banning them entirely only works if there's no human activity. You don't want unbreathable air, but the vast majority of human activities and energy production produces some air pollution so you can't reasonably demand air that meets depopulated Earth standards.

That argument is bullshit though because the EPA administrator is saying things like "We are driving a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion...". That's not the speech of a well meaning person trying to find the right balance between environmental protection and human activity.

mistrial92• 1 year ago

maybe someone with real knowledge can add, but it appears : Coal power plants generate electricity to a grid connection in the common case; alternative sources of electrical generation have changed the economics in most North America markets in pure monetary terms, away from coal; coal plants are classic industrial infrastructure, they cost a lot of build but then operate in a steady way for a very long time, they sit in one location and never move. If all of that is true, then loosening the Coal Power Plant restrictions now seems like, not economic sense but literally a political gift to the incumbent, wealthy ownership. In some US coal states, the ownership of the coal plant is associated with long term political ties. It almost seems like loosening coal restrictions is a sort of political fiefdom guarantee, not an economic move.

maxerickson4• 1 year ago

I wonder to what extent the economics of coal will render the relaxed rules for coal power plants moot.

JumpCrisscross3• 1 year ago

wonder to what extent the economics of coal will render the relaxed rules for coal power plants moot

I'd guess nothing. This seems aimed at gas. Coal is sort of coming along for the ride.

(This is assuming they revoke the rules properly, which given the last 60 days and Trump 1.0 seems unlikely.)

maxerickson4• 1 year ago

The mercury and greenhouse gas rules seem more or less laser targeted at coal. The steam one also (where lots of gas plants are gas turbines rather than steam turbines).

philipkglass• 1 year ago

Earlier this week there was talk of reopening coal units that already shut down:

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/us-should-restart-sh...

The United States should restart shuttered coal-fired power plants under President Donald Trump’s national energy emergency declaration, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said in a video interview with Bloomberg News on Monday.

...

"I think as part of the national energy emergency which President Trump has declared we’ve got to keep every plant open. And if there have been units at a coal plant that have been shut down, we need to bring those back on," he said.

I don't know who would want to operate the unprofitable units, or who would pay to make up the difference, or if permanently-closed units are even in a state such that they could be reactivated. Companies with recently-retired plants may want to expedite major equipment demolition to ensure that they can't be roped into a bad plan.

leereeves• 1 year ago

Is coal uneconomic? China still uses quite a lot of it, which makes me wonder why it would be economic there and not here.

maxerickson4• 1 year ago

They are better at economy than we are

JauntTrooper• 1 year ago

The US has a lot of cheap natural gas and China does not.

Natural gas is hard to transport and often needs to be liquified to travel overseas, so global prices vary widely.

rainsford2• 1 year ago

I'm almost certainly not the intended audience for the EPA's press release, but it's remarkable how many of these bullet points read like "Remove the ban on orphan burning machines to ensure American small businesses have access to alternative heat sources".

You might think I'm exaggerating, but here are a few real bullets from their list:

Reconsideration of Particulate Matter National Ambient Air Quality Standards that shut down opportunities for American manufacturing and small businesses (PM 2.5 NAAQS)

Opportunities for them to decrease air quality?

Restructuring the Regional Haze Program that threatened the supply of affordable energy for American families (Regional Haze)

Definitely looking forward to some more regional haze

Reconsideration of Mercury and Air Toxics Standards that improperly targeted coal-fired power plants (MATS)

Who doesn't love mercury and other toxins in their air?

Reconsideration of wastewater regulations for coal power plants to help unleash American energy (Oil and Gas ELG)

Presumably unleashing it directly into our water supply

Obviously the wishy-washy wording in each of these bullets (reconsider, restructure, etc) leaves a lot of leeway for how much actual change will happen. But it's pretty remarkable to me that the premise is getting rid of wasteful, unnecessary regulation but the actual topics are things like unhealthy particulate matter and toxins in the air or coal plant waste in the water. Where to draw the line can and should be a topic of reasonable debate, but one would think any effort to move the line towards "more stuff in your air and water" would take a more tactful approach.

Tangential to the press release itself, but it's a very interesting note on coordinated messaging that the phrase "Biden-Harris administration" still remains ubiquitous among Republican sources despite being a relatively uncommon way to refer to past Presidential administrations and something that came up basically out of nowhere last year when Biden stepped aside and Harris became the nominee. There's clearly a style guide and man are they sticking to it.

malfist• 1 year ago

Every single one of those is an example of businesses externalizing their costs and capturing more profit for themselves.

atonse• 1 year ago

A lot of it will be a nothing burger.

I’ve read that due to the abundance of natural gas, it’s simply not economical for companies to mine for coal or burn it. So I doubt many companies will be firing up new coal plants.

But then again, was that mainly because of regulations?

defrost2• 1 year ago

Coal is a bit of a side issue here, sure - it's not as economical in the US as it once was and is dying off in any case. This deregulation will extend the runtime of existing coal fired power as the regulations requiring rolling increases to carbon storage over time for coal power are being removed.

However regular oil and gas, which is expanding, is also having clean air regulations torn up:

* Reconsideration of regulations throttling the oil and gas industry

* Reconsideration of mandatory Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program that imposed significant costs on the American energy supply (GHG Reporting Program)

* Reconsideration of Biden-Harris Administration Risk Management Program rule that made America’s oil and natural gas refineries and chemical facilities less safe (Risk Management Program Rule)

The first two allow for greater emissions during extraction and no requirement to record or report.

The third I threw in to highlight what appears to be fairly loaded language .. rolling back a Risk Management Program that made refineries less safe ?

That sounds like a strong opinion held by some refinery owners that really wanted a program tanked. I admit to not having looked into the details, but that does raise an eyebrow.

nitwit005• 1 year ago

Just seems like a huge waste of time for everyone involved. The Trump admin lost a number of legal challenges last time around. No one is going to trust that the deregulation will stick.

If they have control of the house and senate, they should just pass legislation.

92834092322• 1 year ago

Great so you understand the point. The point is to flood the courts and overwhelm the media. Flooding the zone as Steve Bannon calls it.

gamblor956• 1 year ago

Flooding the courts just means that the change they're trying to effectuate remains tied up in courts long after the administration is no longer in office.

defrost2• 1 year ago

Some of the legislation actually being passed is disturbing in Byzantine non obvious ways.

Trump has a lot of leeway to declare emergency rulings and to have those enforced in the short term. Such powers come with a short leash that require appeals to be addressed in a short time frame.

That mechanism was upended two days ago when US Republicians effectively "stopped time" ..

  Each day for the remainder of the first session of the 119th Congress shall not constitute a calendar day for purposes of section 202 of the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1622) with respect to a joint resolution terminating a national emergency declared by the President on February 1, 2025.

~ https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-resolutio...

"Each day [..] shall not constitute a calendar day"

This does not appear (on my admittedly brief search) to be something routine in US resolutions.

There's some further commentary here:

  The Constitution gives to Congress, not the president, the power to impose tariffs. But the International Emergency Economic Powers Act allows the president to impose tariffs if he declares a national emergency under the National Emergencies Act, which Trump did on February 1. That same law allows Congress to end such a declaration of emergency, but if such a termination is introduced—as Democrats have recently done—it has to be taken up in a matter of days.

  But this would force Republicans to go on record as either supporting or opposing the unpopular economic ideology Trump and Musk are imposing. So Republicans just passed a measure saying that for the rest of this congressional session, “each day…shall not constitute a calendar day” for the purposes of terminating Trump’s emergency declaration.

~ https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/march-12-2025

move-on-by• 1 year ago

Reconsideration of wastewater regulations for coal power plants to help unleash American energy (Oil and Gas ELG)

For your reading enjoyment: The Toxic Wave That Swallowed a Tennessee Town, https://oxfordamerican.org/oa-now/the-toxic-wave-that-swallo...

wewewedxfgdf• 1 year ago

With all these changes happening in the U.S, I just keep saying to myself;

"This is what the American people want. This is the choice of the people. It's democracy in action and this is what the American people voted for, adults with eyes wide open."

SlightlyLeftPad2• 1 year ago

They’re only getting information from one source, i’d be shocked if they’re even remotely aware of this.

tsunagatta• 1 year ago

Fox News has an article on this (if that’s the one you mean): https://www.foxnews.com/politics/bidens-woke-green-agenda-ch...

krapp• 1 year ago

America is getting the government it deserves, good and hard.

harimau7772• 1 year ago

Between Citizens United, voter suppression, gerrymandering, the electoral college, and the two party system, I think it's a stretch to call what America has a democracy.

lotsofpulp2• 1 year ago

One could’ve made that case if Trump didn’t win the popular vote.

cute_boi• 1 year ago

People think they have voice and choice, but in reality there is no choice. This is not what majority of American wants. Trump didn't win because he is good, he won because people didn't see any fruitful policies from Joe Biden/Kamala Harris.

gambiting6• 1 year ago

>People think they have voice and choice, but in reality there is no choice.

They could have chosen not to vote for Trump. That was always an option.

>Trump didn't win because he is good, he won because people didn't see any fruitful policies from Joe Biden/Kamala Harris.

So what was that vote then? Out of spite? I could believe that in 2016 - but now I absolutely don't. People have seen what 4 years of Trump look like, and they voted to have that again. Biden being or not being competent has literally nothing to do with it - everyone who voted for Trump did so because they saw what his 4 years of presidency looked like and they like it. If they say otherwise they are just lying to themselves first and foremost.

Gud6• 1 year ago

This is NOT democracy in action. The US is only nominally democratic. What little democracy you had over there has been completely hijacked by monied interests and the propaganda has always been extreme.

There are much better functioning democracies in the world. Unfortunately for everyone, the US isn’t one of them.

In Switzerland the presidency is rotated every six months between the biggest parties. They have public referendums four times per year. Unsurprisingly, they have highly functioning institutions.

gambiting6• 1 year ago

>This is NOT democracy in action.

That's just arguing over semantics, which just isn't helpful. US has one democratic action still in operation - voting for the president. And people voted for Trump having seen exactly what kind of administration he would lead - so this is what they get. So yes, this is democracy in action, even if other nations do it better.

bdangubic• 1 year ago

What a banana republic we have become when this is coming from Environment Protection Agency -

this is like DEA press-release about opening up pop-up fentanyl shops in every elementary school

justin66• 1 year ago

This is great. I feel like I haven't been getting enough mercury in my diet and there are a few things in there which might fix that.

EPA Launches Biggest Deregulatory Action in U.S. History

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