By E. Calvin Beisner

Every once in a while—well, a lot more often than I wish—I miss a big story related to climate change and climate policy. Week before last, on my birthday, I missed a really big one: the decision by the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to reverse a critical piece of Obama-era energy regulation. Acting EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler—whom President Donald Trump nominated the following week to become permanent Administrator—announced December 6 that EPA would liberate new-construction coal-fired power plants from the requirement that “carbon capture and sequestration” (CCS) be part of their plans. “By replacing onerous regulations with high, yet achievable, standards,” Wheeler said in the EPA’s press release, “we can continue America’s historic energy production, keep energy prices affordable, and encourage new investments in cutting-edge technology that can then be exported around the world.”

“Today’s actions reflect our approach of defining new, clean coal standards by data and the latest technological information, not wishful thinking,” said EPA Assistant Administrator for the Office of Air and Radiation Bill Wehrum. “We take seriously our responsibility to protect public health and the environment in a manner consistent with the requirements of the Clean Air Act and will continue to do so. U.S. coal-fired power will be a part of our energy future and our revised standards will ensure that the emissions profiles of new plants continue to improve.”

The new decision makes great sense. CCS is an unproven and exorbitantly costly technology—both of which led to arguments by opponents during the Obama years that requiring it violated the Clean Air Act’s rule that technologies EPA forced on energy producers be tested and found not only mechanically feasible but also economically viable. I.e., EPA couldn’t demand that producers meet impossible standards— thus effectively driving them out of business.

Not surprisingly, adherents of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming (CAGW) howled in protest. Congressman Frank Pallone (D-NJ) called the announcement “another attempt by the Trump Administration to prop up the coal industry at a time when carbon emissions worldwide are reaching record levels,” complaining that all the Trump Administration sought was to “protect the interest of the polluters.”

Now, if carbon dioxide were a pollutant, Pallone and others like him might have a point, though it still would make sense to ask whether the benefits of the energy generated from coal outweighed the risks arising from its CO2 emissions.

But as I argued in a three-part post, CO2 is not a pollutant. Unlike carbon monoxide, sulfur oxides, heavy metals, and fly ash, CO2 poses no threat to human (or animal) health at concentrations 10 to 20 times the global average today—and there is no prospect that we’ll reach those levels, ever, because there simply isn’t enough fossil fuel to burn to do it. CAGW alarmists counter that rising atmospheric CO2 concentration threatens the earth with catastrophic warming. On the contrary, adding CO2 to the atmosphere makes little difference to global temperature. But it makes a huge difference to plant growth—and consequently to food availability for everything that eats plants, either directly or indirectly by eating other things that do eat them.

The EPA’s new decision makes perfect sense. It should reduce electricity costs for Americans in the future, while keeping our air clean and safe. Take it as a Christmas present.