First there was the Biden family pardon, then there was the J6 political prisoner pardon. Participating in the latter, however, may be another case in which the wrongfully convicted person is absolved of guilt. This convict party has spent almost a generation poking around public opinion and pseudoscience, so it's high times. his name?
Carbon dioxide – CO2 for short.
Gas's savior may be President Donald Trump. President Donald Trump has decided that the CO2 incident deserves a different look. The problem is the 2009 “Finding of Hazards” in which the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under Barack Obama unilaterally determined that the gas was a “pollutant” and that it was necessary for the existence of life. ) But now Trump has ordered this discovery revisited.
real environmental justice
climate science. The Press reported on the story Wednesday:
President Trump's instructions to EPA reconsider revisiting hazard findings. For years, skeptics have pointed out obvious flaws in both the process by which the discovery was made and the assumptions underlying it. for example:
Scientific uncertainty: The discovery of the danger relied heavily on computer models predicting catastrophic global warming. However, these models do not consistently match the observed temperature trends. By exaggerating the risks posed by greenhouse gases, the EPA has created an environment of fear and justified strict regulations. Legal excesses: The Clean Air Act was never designed to address global climate issues. Extending the law to regulate carbon dioxide was a legal maneuver that bypassed Congress and concentrated power in the hands of unelected bureaucrats. Economic Harm: Regulations resulting from the discovery of hazards have been disastrous for American workers and families. High energy costs disproportionately harm the poor and working class, while businesses face increased compliance costs that stifle innovation and job creation.
The issues that hurt the poor cannot be overemphasized. Bjorn Lomborg of the Copenhagen Consensus Center had estimated that lowering the Earth's temperature by a third of 2100 degrees would cost $100 trillion. Therefore, wasting resources has tragic effects. As Lomborg wrote in 2019, citing research, the Paris Climate Agreement
It would lead to an increase in poverty of about 4% (and) and “could slow down poverty reduction in developing countries”. …In fact, a “sustainable” world would have an average of 26 million more people in poverty by 2050 than a rich and unequal fossil-fuelled world.
Is CO2 a pollutant? Science says…
One of the dangers of mixing government and science is that the latter's decisions are often more political than scientific. Consider CO2. In fact, it is not a pollutant, but a prerequisite for the persistence of life. In this regard, astrobiologist Jack O'Malley James predicted in 2013 that life on Earth will end due to too little CO2. reason? If the level of the gas continues to decline (a long-term pattern), its concentration will eventually become too low for plant photosynthesis. And, of course, without plant life, the entire food chain would collapse. (But don't do the “eat, drink, and be merry” routine just yet. O'Malley-James' apocalypse is still a billion years away.)
This is because everything is toxic at a certain level, even water. So, in principle, “the dose makes the poison.” But what about CO2? Are those levels excessive?
The average person might estimate that 20% of our atmosphere is carbon dioxide. However, in reality, this number is more than 4/100ths of 1 percent, or about 420 parts per million. Now consider that its concentration was once 5,000 ppm and that photosynthesis in plants stops at 150 ppm. Are the current levels really too high?
(Propaganda alert: “CO2 levels can make plants unable to photosynthesize” asked.) eliciting a curious response from Bing today. ) can no longer photosynthesize at CO2 levels exceeding ).
deeper issues
But in reality, the deeper problem here is not CO2 concentrations, but the concentration of political power, which is in the wrong hands. Just last Wednesday, I wrote about how the federal bureaucracy has become the de facto fourth branch of the government. But more than that, it serves as the most powerful branch.
Consider the EPA's CO2 findings. Aside from how the Clean Air Act is likely to be unconstitutional, the reality is that the Clean Air Act, created in 1963, does not contain real pollution such as ground-level ozone, carbon monoxide, particulate matter, lead, and sulfur dioxide. It was meant to deal with substances. Naturally occurring, life-sustaining CO2 was not even considered.
So by claiming that the Clean Air Act suddenly applied to CO2, the EPA essentially rewrote the law. That is the job of Congress, not the bureaucracy.
Even doing this with the blessing of an elected president, President Obama the EPA did, does not sanitize it. The secretariat also does not have the authority to make laws.
an ever-present body of government
But bureaucratic trespass does not end with the de facto usurpation of legislative power. In a recent poll, a high percentage of federal bureaucrats “vowed not to implement lawful order from Trump given the bad policies,” writes the New York Post (original emphasis). This is a bureaucratic usurpation of executive power. Added to this, under the “Chevron” doctrine, the bureaucracy was also given the power to determine the meaning of ambiguous laws. This is a de facto exercise of judicial power. And what will this be? What did James Madison, the father of the Constitution, know?
“(a) all powers in the same hands, legislative, executive, judicial cc muscle,” he warned, “is the very definition of tyranny.”
In fairness, there is good news. After 40 years of trespass, Chevron's doctrine was finally overturned by the Supreme Court last year. And even before that, bureaucratic tyranny was not complete. (The court has also unjustly ascribed power to itself.) Nevertheless, releasing CO2 from its metaphorical prison is not enough. Large beasts must be caged and then reduced to size until the imperial bureaucracy is gone.
