The EPA, Energy Crops And Planetary Boundaries – All the pieces Is Related

Final Up to date on: 14th June 2025, 01:00 am

This week, the EPA introduced its intention not to guard the setting by rolling again the principles put in place by these hated socialists Barack Obama and Joe Biden that restrict emissions from thermal producing vegetation. What this failed administration is saying is solely this — firms are extra necessary than folks. Throughout his inauguration speech in January, the putative president shouted, “We are going to drill, child, drill.”

Relaxation assured, mild reader, this isn’t about rolling again air pollution guidelines from energy vegetation. It’s about eliminating them. Right here is the abstract from the EPA’s proposal, which makes its intentions crystal clear:

“On this motion, the U.S. Environmental Safety Company (EPA) is proposing to repeal all greenhouse gasoline (GHG) emissions requirements for fossil fuel-fired energy vegetation. The EPA is proposing that the Clear Air Act (CAA) requires it to make a discovering that GHG emissions from fossil fuel-fired energy vegetation contribute considerably to harmful air air pollution, as a predicate to regulating GHG emissions from these vegetation. The EPA is additional proposing to make a discovering that GHG emissions from fossil fuel-fired energy vegetation don’t contribute considerably to harmful air air pollution.

“The EPA can be proposing, instead, to repeal a narrower set of necessities that features the emission pointers for current fossil fuel-fired steam producing items, the carbon seize and sequestration/storage (CCS)-based requirements for coal-fired steam producing items enterprise a big modification, and the CCS-based requirements for brand new base load stationary combustion generators.”

The crux of the EPA’s argument is that carbon dioxide emissions from thermal producing stations have decreased from about 5.5 p.c of worldwide emissions in 2005 to about 3 p.c at present. Subsequently, lowering these emissions additional, as directed by the Biden administration, would have little impact on public well being. However CleanTechnica readers, who’re all properly above common, will be aware the brand new proposal kind EPA is not about rolling again the usual set by the prior administration. It’s about eliminating all restrictions on energy plant emissions. When you don’t imagine that, return and browse the primary sentence of its proposal once more.

Help For The EPA Roll Again

Lee Zeldin, the stooge heading the EPA at present, crowed, “Relaxation assured President Trump is the largest supporter of unpolluted, lovely coal, EPA helps pave the best way for American vitality dominance as a result of vitality improvement underpins financial improvement, which in flip strengthens nationwide safety.”

In accordance with NPR, Wealthy Nolan, head of the Nationwide Mining Affiliation, added his personal endorsement. “We applaud the Trump administration’s work to counter the Biden administration’s direct assault on coal energy.” West Virginia Governor Patrick Morrisey known as the proposal “a significant victory for West Virginia, our vitality producers, and each American who depends upon dependable, inexpensive electrical energy.” Morrisey’s remark is a swipe at renewables and pays homage to the shibboleth of “baseload energy,” a assemble that Michael Barnard uncovered as antiquated in a latest CleanTechnica article.

Wyoming is the highest coal-producing state in America, so naturally its governor, Mark Gordon, embraced the EPA proposal. “Right this moment, I welcome the proposed repeal by the EPA of the so-called Clear Energy Plan Model 2 that [EPA] Administrator Lee Zeldin and I’ve mentioned over the previous a number of months, and I encourage him to proceed with it with all due urgency. The lopsided and misguided insurance policies of the Biden administration have already wreaked sufficient havoc on our nation’s energy provide and delayed our progress offering the attractive clear coal President Donald Trump acknowledges as important to having a dependable, inexpensive and dispatchable vitality provide for our nation.”

Not Everybody Is Thrilled

Not everyone seems to be delighted by the brand new EPA coverage initiative. “These regressive proposals are unhealthy for public well being and unhealthy for local weather, all to prop up among the highest polluting energy vegetation within the nation,” Shaun Goho, authorized director at Clear Air Job Drive, wrote in a press release. “The EPA is hoisting the white flag of give up on the facility plant air pollution that’s poisoning the air we breathe and harming our local weather,” wrote Manish Bapna, CEO of the Pure Assets Protection Council.

“As Trump and his EPA proceed to shovel soiled previous coal down our throats, they’re now including extra poisonous heavy metals like mercury, lead and arsenic to the combo,” mentioned Ryan Maher, an legal professional on the Heart for Organic Range. “If these reckless rollbacks are allowed to face they’ll solely stir up excessive warmth and wildfires, and so they’ll set off extra little one deaths, extra cancers, extra lung illnesses, and extra coronary heart assaults.”

The EPA And Ocean Acidification

Ryan Maher isn’t incorrect. Fossil fuels at the moment are the official faith of the USA, and lots of Individuals are bowing and praying in assist of the motion. The issue, after all, is that so as to take action, they must reject science. America is on its method again to the nice previous days when witches had been burned on the stake and non-believers had been stripped bare, dunked in sizzling tar, coated in feathers, and ridden out of city on a rail. Vacationers of each description at the moment are required to give up their digital gadgets to jackbooted authorities who scrutinize their social media accounts and contacts for any trace that they could harbor ideas that aren’t in step with prescribed dogma.

However whereas America is consuming deeply of the fossil gas Kool-Assist, issues are taking place within the setting due to the rising ranges of air pollution within the ambiance. Some imagine that there isn’t any such factor as an excessive amount of carbon dioxide. How might that be? Crops want carbon dioxide to develop. That’s true, however as my previous Irish grandmother favored to say, there might be an excessive amount of of a superb factor. Water can be important to life, however an excessive amount of water might be lethal, because the passengers on the Titanic found to their sorrow on April 15, 1912.

When there’s an excessive amount of carbon dioxide within the ambiance, extra of it will get dissolved within the waters of the ocean, which creates carbonic acid. In a research revealed June 9, 2025, within the journal International Change Biology, scientists revealed the outcomes of analysis performed on behalf of the European Area Company, the Pure Surroundings Analysis Council, the International Ocean Monitoring and Observing and Ocean Acidification Packages, NOAA, and the Slovene Analysis Company. Right here is the summary from that research:

“Ocean acidification has been recognized within the Planetary Boundary Framework as a planetary course of approaching a boundary that might result in unacceptable environmental change. Utilizing revised estimates of pre-industrial aragonite saturation state, state-of-the-art data-model merchandise, together with uncertainties and assessing impression on ecological indicators, we enhance upon the ocean acidification planetary boundary evaluation and exhibit that by 2020, the typical world ocean circumstances had already crossed into the uncertainty vary of the ocean acidification boundary.

“This evaluation was additional prolonged to the subsurface ocean, revealing that as much as 60% of the worldwide subsurface ocean (right down to 200 m) had crossed that boundary, in comparison with over 40% of the worldwide floor ocean. These adjustments lead to vital declines in appropriate habitats for necessary calcifying species, together with 43% discount in habitat for tropical and subtropical coral reefs, as much as 61% for polar pteropods, and 13% for coastal bivalves. By together with these extra issues, we recommend a revised boundary of 10% discount from pre-industrial circumstances extra adequately prevents threat to marine ecosystems and their providers; a benchmark which was surpassed by 12 months 2000 throughout the whole floor ocean.”

Breaching Planetary Boundaries

In accordance with Paul Hormick at Inexperienced Dispatch, the thought of planetary boundaries was first proposed in 2009 by a bunch of local weather scientists led by former Stockholm Resilience Heart director Johan Rockström. They signify boundaries on world processes affected by human exercise. If these limits are crossed, everlasting, unacceptable environmental change turns into actuality for planet Earth.

Hormick writes: “Ocean acidification is especially problematic for creatures resembling oysters, clams, and sea urchins. The elevated acidity makes it troublesome for them to kind their shells. Corals even have a tougher time forming their buildings. Creatures resembling sea stars have issue forming their protecting outer layers in acidic oceans.

“Due to ocean currents, temperature variations, and different elements, the extent of ocean acidification varies all through the world. Acidity in tropical areas might be twice that of polar areas. Current analysis has additionally discovered that acidification is spreading to deeper waters. The authors of this most up-to-date paper prolonged their inquiry to the subsurface ocean and located that as much as 60 p.c of the worldwide subsurface waters — right down to 600 toes — had crossed the planetary boundary, in comparison with round 40 p.c of the floor oceans.”

We alter the acidity of the ocean at our peril. Billions of individuals depend on the seas for his or her sustenance. There’s a so-called meals chain that begins with phytoplankton. We might imagine we’d by no means eat such tiny organisms, however actually they’re the supply of all of the meals that marine animals devour. When you eat tuna, clams, scallops, or mahi mahi, you’re benefiting from the abundance of phytoplankton within the ocean. The krill which can be the first supply of meals for whales depend upon phytoplankton as properly.

The purpose is solely this: There may be an excessive amount of carbon dioxide within the ambiance and the proposal by the EPA will add extra. The Earth doesn’t care a horse’s patoot about vitality dominance. Those that worship within the temple of fossil fuels are making the Earth unfit for human habitation — that’s the lengthy and in need of it. That’s one thing to think about when your authorities promotes extra air pollution somewhat than much less.

A Holy Conflict On Science

We’re achieved asking folks to spare a thought of their kids and grandchildren. That argument clearly carries no weight within the minds of MAGAlomanics. There is just one solution to maintain polluters in test, and that’s by making them pay for the hurt they do. All the pieces else is simply empty phrases and failed hopes. Placing a value on carbon and methane air pollution is the one method ahead.

We will additionally throw bums like Lee Zeldin out of presidency and change them with people who find themselves not apostles for the fossil gas corporations. These are individuals who would fortunately gouge their eyes and pour boiling sizzling oil within the ears to maintain from studying something about how human exercise is altering Nature. In the event that they get their method, numerous folks will die prematurely and future generations might by no means be born. What’s astonishing is how comfy they, and so many others, are with that.