Former Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) staffers, now at environmental groups, have moved to kill the repeal of what is considered to be the “holy grail of the climate change religion.” [some emphasis, links added]
Last July, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin released the agency’s proposal to repeal the Obama-era Endangerment Finding, which the agency has [used] to justify over $1 trillion in regulations, including the Biden-Harris administration’s electric vehicle mandate.
Eliminating the Endangerment Finding would repeal many greenhouse gas emissions regulations for motor vehicles and give Americans more consumer choice.
The Endangerment Finding created the legal basis for the agency to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, believing that the emissions serve as an alleged threat to public health and welfare.
Zeldin explained in a Breitbart Fight Club Roundtable that the Endangerment Finding never made a “straight-line conclusion” that carbon dioxide from motor vehicle engines caused “endangerment.” He described this finding as the “holy grail of the climate change religion.”
He said in a written statement last July:
“With this proposal, the Trump EPA is proposing to end sixteen years of uncertainty for automakers and American consumers. In our work so far, many stakeholders have told me that the Obama and Biden EPAs twisted the law, ignored precedent, and warped science to achieve their preferred ends and stick American families with hundreds of billions of dollars in hidden taxes every single year. We heard loud and clear the concern that EPA’s GHG emissions standards themselves, not carbon dioxide which the Finding never assessed independently, was the real threat to Americans’ livelihoods. If finalized, rescinding the Endangerment Finding and resulting regulations would end $1 trillion or more in hidden taxes on American businesses and families.” [Emphasis added]
Now, in March, many environmental groups, including the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), have sued the EPA, believing it is illegal for the agency to repeal these so-called “climate protections.”
The groups also filed a motion to extend the time to file, which some believe is a tactic to delay and eventually kill the repeal of the Endangerment Finding.
Steve Milloy, a member of Donald Trump’s first presidential transition team for the EPA and editor of the outlet Junk Science, said this tactic is used to delay the implementation of a rule so that a potential future Democratic Congress or presidency could ultimately kill the repeal.
Milloy told Breitbart News that the groups hope to “delay things” to the point where the repeal can be “killed” or “quickly reversed” with a “Democrat administration,” under a new administration, or a new Congress.
The NRDC and EDF, two of the groups moving to extend filing deadlines in the lawsuit against the repeal of the Endangerment Finding, have former staffers for the EPA’s Office of General Counsel, including Ryland Shengzhi Li and Abirami Vijayan, who served for three years as assistant general counsel for the National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) group within the EPA’s Office of General Counsel.
Milloy explained that the transition from the EPA to a leftist environmental group is all part of the leftist environmentalists’ “revolving door.”
“You know, former Obama EPA Chief Gina McCarthy went to run NRDC after Obama was out, right? So, I mean, that’s a pretty common career path, revolving door, if you will. No, but they’re really doing the same work. I mean, when they were EPA staffers, they were implementing the crazy green agenda, so now they’re advocating for it. What’s the difference?”
Read more at Breitbart
