MICHAEL CHAMBERLAIN: Good Riddance To EPA’s Endangerment Finding

Better late than never. With the announcement that the EPA will reverse its 2009 greenhouse gas endangerment finding under the Clean Air Act, the agency is righting a grievous wrong committed by the Obama administration.

A watchdog organization, Government Accountability & Oversight (GAO), reviewed the finding, under which the EPA gave itself the authority to regulate carbon – a basic element in all life on Earth – by claiming it was a pollutant, and called it a “product of a sham regulatory process and Due Process.” GAO said the finding was “unlawfully predetermined” and it urged the EPA to revisit it.

The regulation promulgated by the hubris of Obama’s EPA has been the foundation of the climate change regulatory regime that created and enriched a new economic sector with an interest in maintaining climate panic. But for most Americans it represented government overreach on steroids.

The endangerment finding came in the early months of the Obama administration, but it was cooked up long before in coordination with environmental activist special interests and privately referred to among agency personnel as a “decision ready to go.” The EPA was picking carpet for all the extra office space it would need before the analysis began.

These were true believers, uninterested in scientific proof and impatient with – even contemptuous of – the normal rulemaking procedures. The deadlines they set were artificial, not scientific or procedural.

According to a Daily Caller report, “Obama EPA officials were hoping to announce the Endangerment Finding proposal ahead of Earth Day, internally flagging concerns over missing the self-imposed deadline related to ‘domestic and foreign criticism would begin immediately and mount steadily,’ according to a memorandum for Obama attributed to former EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, dated March 2009.”