Many will consider this announcement to be a "death knell" for the planet.

“After 16 years, EPA will formally reconsider the Endangerment Finding,” said Administrator Zeldin. “The Trump Administration will not sacrifice national prosperity, energy security, and the freedom of our people for an agenda that throttles our industries, our mobility, and our consumer choice while benefiting adversaries overseas. We will follow the science, the law, and common sense wherever it leads, and we will do so while advancing our commitment towards helping to deliver cleaner, healthier, and safer air, land, and water.”  

It is actually the exact opposite for both the planet and the United States.

Nobody wants to live in a dystopian hellscape.  Nobody.

Yet a couple of billion people do -- in other countries.  We used to have significant bits and pieces of it right here in America; I grew up in a "soft" version of it, where the flowing river water had few fish in it, and those that were there you could not eat.  We fixed that and today that same body of water is clear rather than being murky all the time -- and the fish aren't full of poisons.

Ditto for the air -- when I was growing up you choked going past the chemical plants.  Today there are still chemical plants, including some in the same places, but they emit far less and you can't smell them anymore.

As I've pointed out when it comes to gasoline engines in production vehicles we solved more than 99% of the problem with evaporative fuel cannisters, port fuel injection, catalytic converters and oxygen sensors in the exhaust which, under computer control, reduce hydrocarbon and carbon monoxide emissions to nearly zero once the catalyst and sensors have reached operating temperatures.  While you can still "smell" a gas car on a cold start because the sensors and cat require heat to operate and thus do not come online instantly within a couple of minutes both are operating and the odor -- and emissions -- are basically gone.  What's left is carbon dioxide which is the subject of this "endangerment" finding -- when in fact CO2 is plant food.

Gas engines that run at stochiometric (that is, exactly balanced between the fuel and air ratios) mixtures produce very little CO and it is unburned fuel that produces HC emissions.  Engine designers try to have the unburned fuel amount be zero (you obviously paid for it and that which is not burned doesn't produce energy thus it is wasted) but zero is unattainable.  The computer reads oxygen in the exhaust and instantaneously adjusts the mixture by controlling the amount of fuel injected, and the catalytic converter burns up the small extra amount of unburned fuel that inevitably remains, reducing it to CO2.

I'm not kidding about CO2 being plant food; it really is.  If you talk to anyone who has a greenhouse on a commercial basis you'll find many of them intentionally pump in more CO2 because up to about 1,000 ppm, or somewhat more than double the average in the air, plant growth increases.  Of course a greenhouse is expensive and you want to boost output -- and CO2 is reasonably cheap.

The average indoor CO2 concentration is around 1,000 ppm as well.  Why?  Because few people have a lot of plants (which absorb CO2 and produce O2) there are animals inside (which expire CO2) and we deliberately limit air exchange inside a building because we'd prefer that the heated and cooled air we spend money to produce stay in the building.  Some does leak out and in, obviously, and has to because otherwise you'd consume all the oxygen (and die) if there was no exchange -- but limiting it by closing doors and windows when you have the heat or A/C on is necessary so you can pay the power or gas bill.

Given the impending return of sanity to the EPA and the removal of said "CO2" finding crap, let me say this to the various entities in Government and the carmakers:

STOP the en****ification of modern engines and vehicles.  A few non-exhaustive (but some of the most-egregious) examples:

• All the modern 10-speed automatic transmissions suck.  Its not that you can't make a 10 speed automatic.  You can; look in modern Class 8 trucks.  Now look at the size of said gearbox.  What you can't do is stuff that much crap inside a case of the size required for a light truck or car and not have to size down things that take load.  When you do that they break because there just isn't enough "beef" where there needs to be.  ALL of the modern ones are **** no matter who makes them; they all fail at ridiculously-elevated rates because there is just too much crap to cram into the space available at that level of complexity.   Cut that **** out chasing the last half mile per gallon -- and yes, when the EPA gets rid of such stupidity in the next few months give me a nice six-speed ATX or MTX in a light truck that will run for 300,000 miles with reasonable maintenance.  I'll buy said vehicle, assuming the below is also done at the same time.
  
  
• Cut the **** with the engines.  Same thing applies here.  Nobody has made "cylinder deactivation" work without severe impacts on service life.  ALL such implementations, irrespective of manufacturer, have outrageously-accelerated lifter and complete engine failure rates and in addition these failures are usually without warning and immediately strand you when they occur.  Lifter failures destroy engines -- if not directly then indirectly because when they fail hardened steel material goes into the oil and all through the engine and that is much harder than the bearing material either in the rods and mains or worse, parent bore material in lifter bores, rocker shafts and similar in the head which today is basically always aluminum.  Yes, the oil filter catches most of it but not all, and if you've ever taken apart an engine that has failed or is in the process of it the sparklies are all over the place and they're highly-abrasive -- effectively sandpaper on those surfaces.  The same is true for the idiocy displayed by manufacturers using variable-displacement oil pumps; the problem here is that at low RPM and load once some wear in the engine occurs over time you have insufficient oil pressure to insure lubrication throughout the engine at idle.  This in turn leads to a spun bearing and the engine chucks a rod through the side of the block.  Oil pump and drive failures nearly always destroy the engine when they occur; the oil pump in an engine is equivalent to the heart in a living being and when your heart stops pumping you die.  We've known how to make extremely reliable positive-displacement and simple oil pumps for decades and doing stupid things like driving them with a belt which is difficult to change (hello Chevy on the new "Duramax" engine line; you must drop the transmission to change it) is either stupid or intentionally done to cause engine failures that economically destroy the vehicle and any manufacturer that does either should have all of their "engineers" summarily executed.
  
  
• Both of these first two items are done to try to get another tenth or two of a mile per gallon.  The cost of that is turning what should be a 300,000 mile drivetrain with ordinary maintenance into one that is lucky to get out of the 60,000 mile warranty without blowing up.  The ecological cost of making vehicles "disposable" like this is outrageous, if it happens to you when at some distance from home (e.g. on vacation) it adds thousands to the damage you suffer and all of this **** must be stopped; it is a direct consequence of "fuel economy mandates" and similar bull**** including trying to drive people into EVs.  We have known how to for decades, and can today, build gas and diesel drive lines that easily go well beyond 200,000 miles with nothing other than ordinary maintenance.  The failure rates on these newer vehicles in extremely expensive driveline components is intentional; whether it is driven by companies trying to make vehicles disposable and destroying the used-car market so as to force you to buy another $80,000 vehicle or whether driven by government mandate -- or some of each -- it must end right now.  With the government mandates gone if it continues then as citizens we should burn the automakers to the ground along with eating all of their executives and their entire family -- they have known how to build durable drivelines for more than 20 years and proof of it is found in all the 20 year old ones that are still in perfectly good operating condition and have never had a single internal component touched.  There are FOUR such vehicles, all 2015 or older with three of them old enough to drink, two of them having more than a quarter-million miles on them and both the others well north of 100k miles on the clock in my direct family.
  
  
• Diesels are a more-complex question.  It is without debate that catalytic converters work.  But what is also without debate is that design decisions were made by automakers that wildly shorten the driveline service life of modern diesels in light and medium-duty trucks.  This has to be reversed.  One of the most-serious is placing the DPF and catalytic converter in the same housing; what prevents a manufacturer from separating them with a flanged joint between them and at the DPF rear, with both housings made of stainless steel, so the DPF can be easily removed and either cleaned or replaced?  Nothing, as far as I can tell, yet nobody does.  Having a 100,000 mile or so service interval part that costs thousands to replace due to being integrated with the (very expensive) catalytic converter is nuts.  So are other stupid things like fuel systems that, when they fail, spray shrapnel throughout and operate at extremely high pressures, so a stuck injector event is virtually guaranteed to instantly destroy the engine, and DEF systems that, if they fail, immediately disable the engine even though it is still perfectly operational, purely on emissions grounds, and again, they're very expensive to fix.  Again the 90% solution was achieved 20 years ago and there's no reason we can't return to it -- and return to 300,000-500,000 mile service life for the drivetrain by doing so.
  
  
• Nobody wants the undisclosed cost of all the ******ned electronic and inextricably linked to required control system doo-dads in modern vehicles, never mind the privacy-violating and sold to insurance company data gathering garbage they typically come with not as extra-cost options but as mandatory components.  The difference in vehicle insurance between a car with all that **** on it (complex "infotainment" touch-screens you have to use to turn on the heat or A/C) never mind the dozen external sensors in the bumper and similar which are $300 each and you can't replace them without the dealer recalibrating the system can easily put 30% or more on your car insurance premium because this crap gets damaged or destroyed in even the most-minor fender-bender or even from a rock kicked up by the vehicle in front of you.  Nowhere is this more-evident than in all the crap aimed forward and through the windshield -- rocks are a thing, cracked windshields are a thing and now they're frequently $1,000+ expenses for this exact reason when the glass itself is $200 installed -- and don't tell me it isn't because a couple of years ago I had the windshield replaced in my truck in my own driveway for that money.  Never mind that a simple double-DIN stereo, if you think the factory one sucks, can trivially be ripped out by any half-competent person and replaced with something better where the modern ones are deliberately both custom-sized and integrated into things like the aforementioned A/C controls so you can't do that, they all spy on you and when the screen fails its not $300 for a Pioneer bought from Crutchfield, its $2,000 for an OE replacement and you have no choice as otherwise you have no heat, A/C or the DEFROSTER.  You can buy a nice double-DIN aftermarket stereo for $300 or so that does both Apple Carplay and Android Auto if you want it, it will work with the factory speakers, a $200 interface keeps your steering wheel controls and in many cases (Maestro) also gives you diagnostics and engine gauges, yes it will run a backup camera, you can plug a 128Gb USB Key into it with your music on it (or stream from your phone on Spotify or whatever) and if it breaks its $300 to replace it just like the original one you put in.  Cut the **** GM, Ford, Chrysler and more -- or **** off and may the children and spouses of your executives be sodomized and fed to feral hogs while you're forced to watch, never mind the forced data collection which is then sold to your insurance company out the back door and used to **** you up the ass with a cactus.  The latter must be barred at a federal level with criminal penalties including forced disgorgement of the entire original purchase price, with all paid or imputed interest, to the consumer if the data is leaked or sold no matter how it happens.  If the car companies want to sell you a convenience feature (like being able to remote-unlock your door) as an opt-in, paid feature then fine but operational data, like where you are, how fast you're going, and whether you accelerate and/or brake belongs to you because the car belongs to you.  Period.  I have no issue with using this data under subpoena if there's a criminal case but the practice of routinely violating your privacy must end.  Likewise, the routine gouging for things like electronic key replacement, which takes seconds, the key fob itself is $20 but the dealer tool that is required and thus they often charge $300 or more plus a mandatory tow must STOP.
  
  
• Stop all of the above and I can buy a $30,000 3/4 ton truck in "work truck" trim -- cloth or vinyl seats, nothing beyond power windows and locks, turn a key to start the car, airbags and ABS.  I can replace the stereo if I want (which will suck from the factory, but it's double-DIN and has a screen so the mandatory backup camera is there.)  It has a reliable driveline with a 6-speed ATX or MTX and the driveline will reliably make it to and beyond 200,000 miles without anything internal to it failing -- and the ATX will have a dip stick and drain plug so said maintenance, along with oil changes, are trivial and inexpensive.  Those who want the "tarted up" vehicles can buy them but those who don't can buy a vehicle without all that crap on it, no "subscriptions" and no data going back to the manufacturer that is then sold off to third parties or can be stolen and used to screw me.  I can choose between gas and diesel engines based on my intended use case.  Yes, they'll get a bit less fuel economy than today but not much less and in exchange I have reliability again; not being stranded 1,000 miles from home on vacation is a lot more important to me than 1mpg and this is a choice Americans have a right to make.  I will buy such a truck right now by the way, and so will, in all probability, a lot of other people -- all made right here in America.

Now let me come back and do air conditioners.....

Oh, and as for the en****ification encompassed in things like Stacey Abrams' garbage-can "non-profit" retrofitting homes with induction stoves?  Yeah, they're $3,000 which is wildly more than a standard gas or electric range but of course if you can force the taxpayer to cover and kick back 10% to Stacey's scam she loves every minute of it -- but she ought to be rotting in a prison cell for the rest of her life learning all about the joys of forced gay sex for running that crap and trying to steal YOUR money.

Why?

Because you can buy a single-burner, 120V plug-in induction plate for about $100!  Yeah, there's even cheaper around but seriously, at just over $100 you can get a high-quality one that absolutely does what an induction range does but with one burner instead of four -- and it requires no special power, plugging right into any existing outlet in your kitchen.  Go look on Amazon; they're all over the place.  I bought one quite a while ago and I use it a lot; in fact, unless I need more than one burner at a time I never use my regular stovetop anymore.  Why?  Because the induction burner is faster, uses far less electricity, has the instant heat control of gas (unlike common electric), food doesn't burn onto it since the surface doesn't heat other than by the pan or pot placed on top so clean-up is a simple wipe-down and it doesn't heat the house.  I can (and do) also unplug it and toss it in my camper when traveling since it weighs nearly nothing and I can run it on limited power off my inverter when "off grid" -- something you obviously can't do with an ordinary range.  The correct, non-scam answer to the original question is 1/30th of the price of Stacey's grift and thus nobody can steal $3,000 per person if you do it this way because there's no reason for the government to incentivize or subsidize anything -- YOU JUST ****ING BUY ONE, USE IT AND ENJOY THE ENERGY SAVINGS PLUS CONVENIENCE.

All of this "green" **** from the government has this same basic problem.  Its all intentionally done at a ridiculous level of theft and scam and in virtually every case all of it is unnecessary.  For almost no money if you have an older home or one that is "leaky" (air wise) and thus very inefficient in terms of energy use you can solve 80+% of it with a couple of cans of spray foam, tubes of calk, weatherstripping for the doors and similar.  Oh yes you can do better at ten or even a hundred or more times the cost but 80% of the problem can literally be solved for under $100 and an afternoon of your time if you get off your ass.  No government anything, except perhaps a video or three explaining how (for those who can't figure it out themselves -- its pretty obvious unless you really are missing a few cans out of your mental six-pack) is required.

The EPA's impending ruling is a good start -- but only a start.

The intentional driving of cost higher, whether it be through "wind and solar" as power generation rather than coal and gas, fuel "economy" standards on vehicles, the same for water heaters, furnaces and similar along with air conditioning and similar gear must stop and be reversed right now.  MUCH of the inflation of the last 20 years has been driven through this scam and there is not only no reason for it environmentally it is screwing ordinary Americans out of trillions of dollars a year.