00:00I do want to start with the fundamental question that's at the heart of all this.
00:05I mean, do you accept the overwhelming scientific consensus that these greenhouse gas emissions are the biggest drivers of man-made climate change?
00:17Well, it's great to be on with you.
00:19First, it's worth pointing out that all eight or so images that you just posted on the screen have nothing to do with this week's announcement.
00:27What the 2009 endangerment finding had to do with was with regards to mobile sources, vehicles.
00:34This week's proposal to rescind the 2009 endangerment finding was with regards to mobile sources, vehicles.
00:41CNN's been using a lot of photos where they show smokestacks of stationary sources like power plants.
00:46That's not what we proposed.
00:48Now, going back to 2009, the science that they were reviewing included both optimistic to pessimistic scenarios.
00:57To reach the 2009 endangerment finding, they relied on the most pessimistic views of the science.
01:04The great news is that a lot of the pessimistic views of the science in 2009 that was being assumed ended up not panning out.
01:12Hey, that's great.
01:13We can rely on 2025 facts as opposed to 2009 bad assumptions.
01:19The other thing, too, is that at EPA, we don't just get to creatively make the law whatever we want it to be.
01:27The Supreme Court ruled in Loper Bright overturning the Chevron doctrine, West Virginia versus EPA, Michigan versus EPA, that agencies like the EPA can't just use vague language in statute and try to make it be whatever we want it to be.
01:43The major policy doctrine also says that when you're going to reach something like an endangerment finding and then have trillions of dollars of regulation, that's something that should be decided by our elected members of Congress in passing statute.
01:57And if you don't mind, the 2009 endangerment finding, while it's simply summed up now as saying carbon dioxide endangers public health and welfare, that's not what they did back in 2009.
02:09They had a lot of mental leaps.
02:11They say carbon dioxide, when mixed with a whole bunch of other well-mixed gases, in some cases not even emitted from mobile sources, they say that that contributes to global climate change.
02:25It doesn't say causes, contributes.
02:27How much, they don't say, but it's north of zero, not much more than zero.
02:31So you're sounding pretty skeptical, then, of this overall scientific consensus that these greenhouse gas emissions are the overwhelming man-made climate change driver.
02:41That might be your way to try to twist my words, but what I'm saying is that we get our power at EPA from what the law states, and the Supreme Court in recent cases have been very clear.
02:55So what I was just describing with all the mental leaps used in the 2009 endangerment finding, Section 202 of the Clean Air Act doesn't allow all of these different mental leaps, as the Supreme Court made clear in recent years.
03:09So I'm not going to get creative with the law.
03:12We're going to read the plain language.
03:14And if Section 202 of the Clean Air Act gets amended by Congress, then we'll follow that new law.
Be the first to comment