REUTERS
EPA boss Lee Zeldin’s push to rescind the White House’s 2009 finding on greenhouse gases marks another great milestone on President Trump’s climate course correction.
But it’s long past time for the entire West to admit it: The whole anti-carbon crusade declared in the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement has proved a disaster — wrecking economies and worsening lives without making a real difference on climate change.
Here at home, the 2009 (Obama-era) “finding” declared that greenhouse gases endanger public health, and so provided a legal pretext for destructive “climate agenda” mandates on everything from power plants to cars to gas stoves.
Rescinding that finding will start to roll back those diktats, boosting the economy and restoring Americans’ freedom to choose the products — and lifestyles — they want.
Zeldin’s move follows President Trump’s Day 1 withdrawal from the Paris Accord (again).
And on Monday, Trump said he’d undo the Biden cancellation of the the Keystone XL pipeline, vowing an easy approval process.
Sanity has clearly returned to DC.
Think about it: Despite trillions spent in the name of curbing greenhouse-gas output, global emissions have increased by about 6% since the deal was inked.
Blame China and India for much of that. From 2015 to 2023, India’s per-capita greenhouse-gas emissions jumped 20%; China’s, by about 15% (133% since 2000).
Beijing is still building coal-fired power plants (the worst source for carbon emissions) with abandon: In 2024, per Bloomberg, it began the construction of coal generators with more capacity than in any other of the prior 10 years.
Yes, those trillions have increased worldwide renewable-energy sources, but they still account for less than 15% of global energy consumption, since overall demand has grown even faster.
Meanwhile, climate mandates have devastated the nations — particularly in Europe — that embraced them.
Take Germany, which has not only tried to phase out fossil fuels, but even shut down all its nuclear reactors.
In 2024, it saw its economy contract for the second straight year.
That hit is indisputably linked to energy-price spikes imposed by the premature rush to an “energy transition” (along with the Ukraine war and weather that makes wind and solar power unreliable).
Those prices have hobbled manufacturers, giving Chinese competitors an edge.
No wonder Germans voted for a change in direction last week by electing Friedrich Merz, who promised to prioritize the economy over warring on carbon.
Voters also boosted the Alternative for Germany’s climate-war foes and kept the Greens, who’ve championed the net-zero drive, to less than 12%.
Other European countries have suffered, too.
British economic growth has been anemic for years, significantly because UK industrial and commercial electric rates are among the highest in the world — four times US rates.
That’s the result of slashing emissions (down 53% from 1990 levels by 2023), a price that has driven manufacturing out of the country.
France has suffered less because it still has ample nuclear power — yet its efforts to cut auto emissions triggered the 2018 “yellow vest” protests and related popular fury that have doomed President Emmanuel Macron’s party.
By contrast, the benefits of the climate war are virtually nonexistent: As economist Bjorn Lomborg points out, if the world does nothing more on emissions through the end of the century, global warming will only slightly trim average total economic growth through 2100 from 450% to 435%.
Trump gets it: The Paris Accord — indeed, the entire net-zero mania — is a bane on human flourishing.
Civilization depends on fossil fuels, and all the global elites’ magical thinking to the contrary can’t change that fact, but only impose pointless misery.
And as the costs of this lunacy keep hitting home, those elites will increasingly find themselves voted out of power.