Hot on the heels of last week's Trump regime edict that fighting climate change doesn't matter because there's nothing we can do anyway and we're all going to die comes this week's smash hit of since we're all going to die anyway, why bother having clean air?
The Trump administration has completed a detailed legal proposal to dramatically weaken a major environmental regulation covering mercury, a toxic chemical emitted from coal-burning power plants, according to a person who has seen the document but is not authorized to speak publicly about it.
The proposal would not eliminate the mercury regulation entirely, but it is designed to put in place the legal justification for the Trump administration to weaken it and several other pollution rules, while setting the stage for a possible full repeal of the rule.
Andrew Wheeler, a former coal lobbyist who is now the acting administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, is expected in the coming days to send the proposal to the White House for approval.
The move is the latest, and one of the most significant, in the Trump administration’s steady march of rollbacks of Obama-era health and environmental regulations on polluting industries, particularly coal. The weakening of the mercury rule — which the E.P.A. considers the most expensive clean air regulation ever put forth in terms of annual cost to industry — would represent a major victory for the coal industry. Mercury is known to damage the nervous systems of children and fetuses.
The details of the rollback about to be proposed would also represent a victory for Mr. Wheeler’s former boss, Robert E. Murray, the chief executive of the Murray Energy Corporation, one of the nation’s largest coal companies. Mr. Murray, who was a major donor to President Trump’s inauguration fund, personally requested the rollback of the mercury rule soon after Mr. Trump took office, in a written “wish list” he handed to Energy Secretary Rick Perry.
The proposal would also hand a victory to the former clients of William Wehrum, the E.P.A.’s top clean air official and the chief author of the plan. Mr. Wehrum worked for years as a lawyer for companies that run coal-fired power plants, and that have long sought such a change.
A spokesman for the E.P.A. did not respond to a request for comment.
Bonus: if Trump's SCOTUS nominee Brett Kavanaugh is confirmed, on top of all the other damage he would do to reproductive rights, civil rights, and labor rights, you can kiss the Clean Air Act goodbye, too.
The proposal also highlights a key environmental opinion of Judge Brett Kavanaugh, the embattled Supreme Court nominee, whose nomination hearings have gripped the nation in recent days.
The coal industry initially sued to roll back the mercury regulation, and in 2014 its case lost in the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. However, Judge Kavanaugh wrote the dissenting opinion in that case, highlighting questions about the rule’s cost to industry.
Should the legal battle over the proposed regulatory rollback go before the Supreme Court, some observers expect that Judge Kavanaugh, if elevated to a seat on the high court, would side with the coal industry.
Because of course he would. Like the Trump regime, Kavanaugh refuses to count the secondary tens of billions in health benefits from reducing carbon and nitrogen oxide that the mercury reduction also grants, and will say that it's bankrupting the energy industry, costing them about $9 billion a year. Of course, when this rule disappears, I sure bet you won't see any cuts in electric rates either.
But energy company profits will be up. And so will health issues related to power plant emissions on the already overtaxed American health care system. Doesn't matter to America though, because at least we didn't elect that Hillary bitch, right?
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