Back in your lane, bureaucrats: Endangerment rollback restores sense to EPA

When Congress passed the Clean Air Act in 1970, climate change wasn’t on anyone’s mind.Yet under an Obama-era decision known as the “Endangerment Finding,” the Environmental Protection Agency has claimed authority under the act to micromanage large parts of the American economy in the name of combating global warming.President Donald Trump’s proposal to reverse the finding returns the Clean Air Act to its original purpose, marking the end of a failed effort to control the climate through executive fiat.The Endangerment Finding stemmed from a 2007 Supreme Court ruling that required the EPA to determine whether carbon dioxide qualified as a dangerous air pollutant under the Clean Air Act.In dissent, Chief Justice John Roberts warned that the decision “ignores the complexities” of addressing global warming through the statute — but suggested its effects “may be more symbolic than anything else.”He couldn’t have been more wrong.In his first year in office, President Barack Obama sought to push a bipartisan climate bill through Congress — but when lawmakers failed to act on his terms, he turned to executive authority.In 2009, Obama’s EPA responded to the high court’s decision and declared that six greenhouse gases, especially carbon dioxide, endanger public health and welfare — and therefore required regulation.Unfortunately, the structure of the Clean Air Act is not conducive to regulating CO2, because it’s designed to regulate industry.Yet CO2 is not just emitted by factories and cars but by every human, frog, parakeet and muskrat, among other animals.The act required federal permits for any source that emitted more than 100 tons per year of an air pollutant.By this measure, some families would need permits just to maintain their households under the Endangerment Finding.Realizing that the law could sweep up hundreds of thousands of stores, apartments, hotels and other small establishments, the agency said it would regulate only sites e...