The Four People At The Center Of The Endangerment Finding Storm In The US

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Yesterday, Zachary Shahan shared with us a statement by the Sierra Club regarding the revocation of the “endangerment finding” — the 2009 determination by the Obama administration that greenhouse gas emissions contribute to global heating and may be regulated by the EPA.

According to the Natural Resources Defense Council, “The Endangerment Finding requires the EPA to take action under the Clean Air Act to curb emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), methane, and four other heat-trapping air pollutants from vehicles, power plants, and other industries.”

“The EPA made the Endangerment Finding following the Supreme Court’s landmark 2007 decision in Massachusetts v. EPA, which held that greenhouse gases are air pollutants covered by the Clean Air Act. The Court further held that the Clean Air Act obligates the EPA to curb pollutants that it determines endanger public health and welfare by contributing to climate change.”

Total Victory Is Near

The current US administration is in a tizzy to repeal the Endangerment Finding. Its adherents told the New York Times recently they are nearing a “total victory” in their quest to eliminate all federal climate regulations. Ordinarily, such a decision would be debated in Congress, but Congress has elected to forfeit its position as a co-equal branch of government as specified in the Constitution and decided to slavishly follow the dictates emanating from what’s left of the White House.

The New York Times reveals that the individuals behind the movement to gut all climate regulations have been maneuvering to execute their coup for more than 15 years. One of them, Mandy Gunasekara, was a staffer to Senator James Inhofe, the lunatic from Oklahoma who stood up in front of the Senate with a snowball to “prove” that global warming was a hoax. Gunasekara handed him the snowball.

She served as the chief of staff at the EPA during Trump I, when another lunatic from Oklahoma, Scott Pruitt, was the head of the agency. Today, according to the Times, she is the author of the chapter in the hateful Project 2025 playbook that is the basis for the policies of the current administration, which the so-called president said during the campaign he knew nothing about.

In a text message, she said she was “extremely proud of the work I and others produced at the Heritage Foundation to rebut junk science and expose the Green New Scam.” She said her work for the group had helped inform “Cooling the Climate Hysteria,” a collection of essays by scholars who reject mainstream climate science.

Another is Jonathan Brightbill, who has made a career of opposing climate action in court. He claims to have assembled an “arsenal of information” to chip away at the scientific consensus that the planet is warming, according to documents seen by the NY Times. In Trump I, his main focus as a federal attorney was on defending the administration’s repeal of Obama-era climate rules, including a landmark regulation aimed at curbing greenhouse gases from power plant smokestacks.

The Big Sharks

But they are little fish in a big pond. The sharks are Russell Vought and Jeffrey Clark, both high profile allies of the sitting president. Vought has often railed against “climate alarmism,” while Clark, has called climate rules a “Leninistic” plot to seize control of the economy. Together the two men drafted executive orders that would dismantle climate initiatives.

Vought is the lead author of Project 2025 and is now the director of management and budget, one of the most powerful positions in any administration. He is the one who hands the president those executive orders to sign, which the president does with a flourish, grinning like a two-year-old who is proud of his latest bowel movement.

Clark was stung by the Massachusetts vs EPA decision in 2007 and has made it his life’s work to avenge that defeat. In 2022, he joined a conservative research organization called the Center for Renewing America that Vought was running from an old rowhouse near the Capitol. It was there that Vought began drawing up sweeping plans for a second Trump administration, culminating in Project 2025.

Under his supervision, Clark drafted executive orders that a future president could use to swiftly scrap Biden’s climate policies, two people familiar with the matter told the NY Times. He also brainstormed legal arguments that the future administration could use to repeal the endangerment finding, they said.

Former colleagues of Clark said he was less concerned with reducing the costs to companies of complying with environmental laws than with fighting what he saw as government overreach in the form of climate policies. Isn’t it odd that those who complain the loudest about “government overreach” are suddenly struck dumb when they get into power?

He has called climate initiatives part of a plot to “control Americans” and to undermine the US economy. This is lunatic fringe stuff. ICE and DHS right now are doing more to “control Americans” than at any time in history, yet Clark is perfectly fine with that. He has called environmentalists a “crazy climate cult” and compared them to the authoritarian pig characters in George Orwell’s dystopian novel “Animal Farm.”

An Ideologue

Clark is “an ideologue with very, very strong views that EPA shouldn’t regulate greenhouse gases,” said Richard Lazarus, a professor of environmental law at Harvard Law School. That seems to be damning with faint praise. What America needs is not ideologues but leaders, people who are willing to stand up for the Constitution and the rule of law. Clark apparently is not one of them.

At the time that he was hired by Vought, Clark was facing a criminal investigation in connection with the effort to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia. President Trump preemptively pardoned Clark in November and the Georgia case was dismissed.Now he is the government’s top regulatory official as the acting head of the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. Talk about “failing up.”

In their new roles, both men have focused on ridding the government of green initiatives. Clark in particular has pushed EPA lawyers to strengthen their legal arguments for repealing the endangerment finding, according to two people familiar with the matter. Allie McCandless, a spokeswoman for the White House Office of Management and Budget, declined to make him available for an interview or respond to questions about his work. She said in a statement that Trump administration officials were “working in lock step to execute on the president’s deregulation agenda.”

Enter Myron Ebell

A principal character in this looming train wreck is Myron Ebell, who Wikipedia says is an American climate change denier who served as the director of global warming and international environmental policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a libertarian advocacy group. He was also chairman of the Cooler Heads Coalition, a politically conservative group formed in 1997 focused on “dispelling the myths of global warming by exposing flawed economic, scientific, and risk analysis.” In September 2016, Ebell was appointed by then Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump to lead his transition team for the Environmental Protection Agency.

In these organizations, Ebell has been central in promoting climate change denial, distributing his views to the media and politicians. Ebell, who is not a scientist, has been described as a climate change skeptic, a climate contrarian, and a climate change denier. Ebell claims that he advocates “for sensible energy policies that benefit everyone. Instead of policies that simply reacts [sic] to alarmism.” He told the NY Times, “No amount of outside public support would have done anything if there hadn’t been those four people: Russ and Jeff and John and Mandy.”

Another person who is jubilant at the impending revocation of the endangerment finding is Neil Chatterjee, a Republican who led the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in the first Trump administration. He told the NY Times that conservative activists had helped sustain the fight against the endangerment finding even after businesses backed out.

Ideological Activists

“It’s not the corporate interests,” he said. “It’s the pure ideological activists who believe that climate change is a hoax, who believe that this was about transferring wealth and driving socialism and destroying renewable energy and promoting left-wing ideology. This is their moment,” Mr. Chatterjee said.

Wow! That is quite a list of grievances! Is that what we here at CleanTechnica are doing — driving socialism and promoting left wing ideology? Maybe so, if those things mean a healthy climate for all citizens of Planet Earth, then guilty as charged, I guess.

Some of you may wonder how these people who promote such radical ideas survive. The answer is — as always — money. Does Harlan Crow take Clarence the Clown on expensive junkets because he is such a swell guy? No, he does it because he is one of the nine members of the Supreme Court and will be in his corner if cases involving Crow and his many business activities come before the court. For Crow, it’s an investment.

Do Vought and Clark and the others sell fish on the street corner to make ends meet? Not likely. They suck up to wealthy contributors like Charles Koch to fund their activities, but always behind a veil of secrecy so no one  knows what they are up to until the trap is sprung. Unlimited campaign funding because of Citizens United is a big part of making all this happen.

A Moment In Time

Steven Milloy, a former Trump transition adviser who runs a website that promotes theories saying that climate change is not real, said the years of work of conservative activists might have gone nowhere if a different Republican had won the presidency. Instead, the activists found a receptive audience in the incumbent, who has called climate change a “hoax” and a “con job.” He is also known for not reading anything and basing his actions primarily on what will benefit him personally the most.

The next challenge is to ensure the repeal of the endangerment finding holds up in court, he said. “We’ve kept the skepticism alive,”Milloy said, adding, “I hope we don’t blow it. I don’t know when or if this opportunity will come around again.”

What opportunity is that, Steven? A chance to accelerate global heating so the tipping point between an sustainable and an unsustainable planet arrives sooner? Maybe their attitudes toward carbon dioxide would be altered if their lips were duct taped to the tailpipe of an F-150 for a week.

Nothing says freedom like choosing to blow your own brains out, and if these bozos choose to do so, please go right ahead. But don’t drag me into the abyss with you. Perhaps there should be a psychological exam for government leaders, one that would weed out the psychopaths, sociopaths, and those who are flat out nuts. That would be a good place to begin, don’t you think?