The good news is we no longer have anything to fear arising from carbon dioxide “emissions,” a term that used to be applied exclusively to federally regulated pollutants that negatively affected air quality and which were deleterious for human health.
Of course, we never had anything to fear from CO2 “emissions.”
No more so (probably less so) than we had to fear from “COVID” – in terms of the actually getting sick (and dying) part. The framing of CO2 as pollution was as ingenious as it is vicious because CO2 is vital atmospheric trace gas and because the traces of it are so minuscule – roughly 0.04 percent of all atmospheric gasses that it is as ridiculous to assert that what we add to it, as by driving cars, threatens to “change” the “climate” in some meaningfully harmful way as the assertion that forcing people to wear “masks” is necessary to “stop the spread.”
In fact, more CO2 in the atmosphere would probably be good for us, because it would be good for the plants that need it to emit oxygen, which we need in order to be able to breath. Plant growth is also good for food – for both us and the animals we eat. The strange obsession with reducing atmospheric CO2 to as little as possible and no matter what it costs would – if it succeeded, “change” the “climate” alright. By making it colder and less hospitable to life. Does this not jibe with what the so-called “elites” have said openly about thinning the (human) herd?
Anyhow, the really good news is that Trump’s EPA has openly discarded the idea that CO2 is a pollutant. More specifically, it has dumped the justification for regulating it as one, by throwing out the specious, Obama-era “endangerment” proclamation that served as the basis for regulating CO2 “emissions.” CO2 is now officially no longer considered a harmful gas – a pollutant – by the federal regulatory apparat and this is arguably the most actually yuge thing Trump’s administration has done so far, in terms of actually making America Great Again.
The gist of the administration’s argument was more procedural. It was that only Congress can pass laws and that what the Obama-era EPA did was to basically arrogate to itself the law-making power by issuing a sweeping regulatory declaration that had the force and effect of law.
This argument is hard to fault on constitutional grounds as well as other grounds. The whole point of having a Congress is not so much for it to enact laws but to assure there is at least some degree of meaningful public accountability for those who write and vote for the laws. EPA is a bureaucracy. It is staffed by people who are appointed, who cannot be fired by the people. Yet the regulations vomited up by the EPA and other bureaucracies function as laws.
A car company can be keelhauled – its officers indicted and even jailed – for transgressing regulations (viz, what happened to VW). Yet there is no way to “vote the rascals” (the unelected tyrants) out.
At least not directly.
Trump’s people asserted, correctly, that the Obama-er “endangerment” finding – which was a political rather than scientifically sound finding – “enabled the Obama and Biden Administrations’ illegal push toward EV mandates.” Indeed it did. In a really oily and sneaky way, too. The Obama-Biden people lacked the honesty to just hurl out an overt EV mandate. Instead, they issued regulations that served as de facto EV mandates – because the only way to comply with the mandates was to manufacture EVs, which were the only vehicles that could comply with them.
Specifically, the now-kiboshed upping of federal fuel economy mandatory minimums (CAFE) to 50 MPG, a near doubling of the existing requirement. EVs – which burn no gas – were awarded absurd “MPGe” equivalents as high as 100 (or even more) MPG”e” that greatly improved a car company’s aggregate MPG – its so called Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) score. That and ever-higher regulatory bars regarding CO2 “emissions” – which every running engine emits – effectively created the EV Mandate Trump just effectively ended.
But is it over? 
The car industry – having literally bought into all of this CO2-is-a-pollutant nonsense – now faces having to accept the billions of dollars in losses ($55 billion so far, at least) incurred by going along with rather than fighting the C02-is-a-pollutant nonsense. They are also in the position of looking both stupid or cowardly; neither being a good look.
Here’s what Ford – to cite one example – said in the wake of the announcement:
“Ford has consistently advocated for a single, stable national standard that aligns with customer choice, the market, societal benefit, and American job growth. Stability and predictability are good for customers and good for America’s ability to compete globally.”
Good so far.
But then this:
“Ford’s big picture sustainability goals remain unchanged: to achieve carbon neutrality across our vehicles, operations and supply chain no later than 2050. We aim to do this by offering our customers a range of electrified solutions including plug-in hybrids, extended-range electric vehicles, and pure electric vehicles.”
Italics added.
Honda says it supports a “balanced approach that supports both a healthy economy and a sustainable future.” The company says it is “concerned that repealing these standards could create unnecessary market disruption and hinder industry effort to address environmental challenges, including clean air for all Americans.”
More italics added.
As if CO2 had anything to do with “clean air.” As if energy-and-natural-resource-hogging battery powered vehicles were “sustainable.”
They have learned to Love Big Big Brother.
Will they be able to unlearn it?
. . .
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[…] https://www.ericpetersautos.com/2026/02/17/the-endangerment-that-never-was-is-over/ […]
Ah Christ, here we go again:
‘After $19.5 billion in write-offs, Ford pivoted its EV plans, but it’s not giving up. The company’s focus is on a new universal electric vehicle (UEV) platform built from the ground up with a “skunkworks” team in California. The first product will be a midsize EV pickup costing around $30,000, targeting profitability from the start.
‘By designing a vehicle optimized for efficiency — through aerodynamics, weight reduction, and a new in-house-built electrical architecture — Ford argues its UEV solution is a winner. “We’re learning a lot from the [Ford] Maverick customer about where they come from, which cars they come out of,” ex-Tesla engineer Alan Clarke said about Ford’s existing gas-powered compact pickup.
‘Ford is betting that the pickup form factor, which is desirable in the US, combined with the popularity of the compact form factor in the Maverick, will drive sales of a $30,000 EV pickup. Expect to hear more about Ford’s new vehicle, such as its official name, EV range, cost, and availability date, likely later this year.’ — Yahoo Finance
https://tinyurl.com/dwkuxext
WTF, duuuude! — JUST BUILD MORE MAVERICKS, with more choices of engines, transmissions, cabs and bed lengths.
At this late date, the market has pounded Jim ‘Meatball’ Farley’s skull to a pulp. But he’s STILL obsessed with his deluded EeeVee windmill tilt.
Only one way to fix this mess: FIRE HIS ASS. Farley burned his fingers on a hot stove. So now he’s sticking his whole arm in the oven. Ford is brain dead.
Seriously dude, do some basic research.
Bill Ford and the ford family have control of the voting shares. They are progressive and Farley is just their proxy. He’s doing exactly what the Ford family wants.
Let’s hope Clowngress gets a spine and claws back ALL the regulatory fatwas that have the force of law but usurp their Constitutional powers. Not holding my breath.
Hi Mike,
That seems unlikely if Democrats regain Congress. If they do regain power, they’ll likely double down on regulatory fatwas such as “Mandatory jabs for all” in the event there’s another “pandemic” and another experimental mRNA “vaccine” is developed, MANDATES for people to go vegan under guise of “Stopping cliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiimate change”, or MANDATES for people to get an EV if they wish to drive an automobile, or perhaps even decrees that the only people “allowed” to own guns are government goons, law enforcement, or military.
The only thing we have to fear is
fear itselfbig governmentglobal warmingclimate changecovidRussiaTrumppedophilesthe economyChinaMaduropeople who think outside the approved narrative and commit random acts ofviolencefree speech.Basically, we’re all fucked.
https://www.serendipity.li/climate/hieb/greenhouse_data.html
Freezing your ass off is a good reason to question the narrative.
CO2 is a trace gas which has never forced temperature, all the data shows one thing, temps on earth change and CO2 follows as CO2 in the atmosphere is regulated by temp and not the other way around.
What Al Gore said was wrong, and he never took a single college science course, let alone have a degree in climatology.
https://i.ibb.co/0p9xXtVn/HOLOCENE-TEMPERATURE-TAPER-AND-DOWNWARD-ACCELERATION.png
this chart shows you the grim reality, earth is cooling, we are post Holocene optimum temps (7-8,000 years ago), just recently we had a “little ice age” and the Thames froze over
the climate hoax has branded much of the population, people are not being given correct information, but they are being emotionally branded by the MSM false narrative
Another chart you can use Eric, a very good graphic showing how miniscule human caused CO2 is
https://i.ibb.co/RGh4vq9P/CO2-IS-A-TRACE-GAS-CHART.png
human caused CO2 is 3.4% of a trace gas
People that think CO2 is a pollutant is proof positive that they slept through 8th grade science class.
I think more people than you assume understand this. It’s why they call it carbon instead of carbon dioxide. If they were honest in their terms people might start to distinguish because they know plants need CO2 and produce oxygen from grade school science. Well, anyone over 40 at least learned this, not sure what kind of useless bull they teach kids now. Even scientists have to twist their brains to explain why higher CO2 is harmful. The whole in the lower atmosphere it’s good, higher it’s bad thing that can’t be modeled to be true. But at least it gives them cover to introduce doubt that covers their pseudo-scientific word salad on PBS.
After the COVID nonsense we were forced to endure in 2020-21, it’s a wonder that authoritarian governments who were also pushing the Net Zero/ Climate change nonsense didn’t also decree MANDATES for people to wear face diapers everywhere under guise of “Stopping the spread of CO2”, as CO2 is what comes out of our noses every time we exhale.
While the Trump administration’s ending of the Obama era “Endangerment finding” is one of the GOOD things they’ve done, how many states that have Democrat governors & Democrat legislatures are doubling down on cliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiimate change lunacy? I can already think of at least 3 of them.
What happens when a different party controls the White House and the executive branch? Won’t they just put this BS back in?
That’s always the risk. It’s why libertarians and paleo-conservatives can’t let off the gas pedal and fall into a “But it’s not happening fast enough” doom loop. We arrived at this point from decades and really centuries of propaganda and lobbying. The modern era of certainly started in 1913 economically and politically and the environmentalist movement in the 1960s. If you think it can be reversed in 12 months then you are irrationally delusional. Think back just to 2024 did you honestly think it could get this far this fast? We’re throwing pebbles against a huge and well funded machine and they are hitting for effect because the collective hive mind is hearing what we’re saying. They are tired of being cold, having expensive crappy cars (both ICE and EV, equal enshitification), tired of being poor. When you have the truth on your side and your predictions match reality it turns out you don’t need billions in propaganda to move the needle.
Eric: “They have learned to Love Big Big Brother. Will they be able to unlearn it?”
The problem the auto industry has is that it is effectively a global business. Sure in America common sense is coming back but no signs of that in Canada, the E.U., China, etc.
Until then what’s an automaker to do? They would rather design, build and sell only one type of vehicle and from their perspective EVs are great!!!!!!! They need a major repair in less than 10 years when the battery dies which in most cases sends them to the scrapyard. A big win for them considering the former owner now has to replace it.
Mazda for example doesn’t make much if any money when you’re driving a 20 year old ICE car but they might if it was a 20 year old EV. At that point you would have potentially replaced the battery pack a couple times as well as a lot of the electronics.
Until the rest of the world’s so called Rulers (elected despots in other words) are forced to confront reality I suspect that we’ll still wind up being screwed in the end.
But at least it’s potentially a good start.
This is true, Landru –
The solution is obvious: We go back to being America – and let the rest of the world be different!
Meanwhile in Germany:
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/germanys-climate-policy-has-moved-politics-courts-and-economy-paying-price
Hey Landru, you wrote, “Mazda for example doesn’t make much if any money when you’re driving a 20 year old ICE car…”
You mean like my 34 year old Miata daily driver?
Yep, the automakers all brag about how long their cars last but we all know they’d be happier if they were all in a junkyard just like it was in the 70’s after 6 or 7 years.
Eric has terribly upset the Lügenpresse:
The New York Times
With the EPA killing the “endangerment finding,” the U.S. will have no laws on the books that enforce how efficient passenger vehicles should be. If the decision holds, it could increase U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, the main driver of global climate change, by 10% over the next 30 years. — Facebook post
https://tinyurl.com/25wzpmy6
‘No laws that enforce how efficient passenger vehicles should be’ — the horror, the horror!
As if the cost of fuel fails to provide an incentive for efficiency. The socialist Lügenpresse is profoundly anti-market, as the market crushes its fake news business.
This, of course, is a typical NYT blatant lie: “‘No laws that enforce how efficient passenger vehicles should be’ — the horror, the horror!”
Oops, copied wrong part. Should be: “the U.S. will have no laws on the books that enforce how efficient passenger vehicles should be.”
The most galling thing about the “climate change” narrative, aside from the fact that it’s a patent lie, is the inference that only the ruling class can solve this non-existent problem. I’ll put this question to anyone who worships authoritarians: when has the government ever solved ANY problem (not counting the problems they themselves created)?
Right??? It’s astounding how people who belieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeve the cliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiimate change narrative buy the line that giving the “ruling class” MORE MONEY & POWER will “Stop cliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiimate change”, in addition to eating bugs and driving an EV. It’s as crazy as the idea that taking X number of COVID booster jabs will “Keep you from getting COVID” despite studies showing that the more booster jabs one took, the MORE likely they were to get the dreaded ‘Rona. It sure was an effective way to pit people who took however many jabs were “recommended” by “Public health poohbahs” against those who only took 2 doses of COVID jab or NO jab at all.
‘They [auto makers] have learned to love Big Brother.’ — eric
Big Brother is their moat. It discourages competitors with regulatory barriers — except for EeeVee makers, which were actually subsidized for awhile. Tesla invented the absurd MPGe statistic, which has to be divided by three to account for power plant efficiency losses. And Big Gov gleefully latched onto it.
Trouble is, Big Gov is not known for innovation. When vehicles are all ‘designed to the [fuel economy] test’ and the groaning bookshelves full of FMVSSes, they all end up the same — bloated, boring and banal.
After 125 years, the auto business — a kind of four-wheeled, low-IQ adjunct to the cell phone business — is a dinosaur ready for the tar pit. Its next round of bankruptcies should be resolved by liquidation, not reorganization.
The problem is no one is willing to consider creative destruction as a business plan. The TBTF banks, the TBTF car companies… everyone knows these businesses only survive because they have special status in government. “Light touch communism” became the default way to do business since the Great Depression because it was thought that a wise technocracy at the wheel was better than the “chaos” of the free market. This thread runs throughout the US economy, from research granted by powerful department heads (RE: Fauci), to military contracts, to blocking out competition by making it nearly impossible to meet the requirements for something as simple as a door handle.
Because the industry has become so risk-adverse that it cannot innovate. So like every Commuist state, technology only serves the state, not the consumer. Consumer goods are locked into a perpetual freeze at the point where the communists took over.
Some call what you speak of,economic fascism. It’s really just fascism. Government controlling and or working hand in hand with business. my 2 cents.
Hi Willy,
I would say that even the “Public health” bureaucracies and many states engaged in a form of fascism for decades via VACCINE MANDATES. What better way to ensure vaccine manufacturers (who can’t be sued for harms caused by their products thanks to a 40 year old law) have perpetual customers than REQUIRING that children (and even adults as was attempted during COVID) take their products to go to school, go to work, or go to public places? However, such mandates were invariably framed as “Protecting Public health” & “For the greater good”.
Close, but they (consumer goods) aren’t frozen-they are actively degrading in quality and functionality. Like they always do in a centrally planned communist/fascist/democratic economy. All that matters are the metrics, the quota, the profit quota, the CO2 quota.
That is key to understanding. Capitalism would reward and punish players based on the market. Which is why government and business always trend to corporatism and fascism. It’s not specifically an authoritarianism system that wants to murder dissidents. That is certainly a possible and maybe inevitable outcome but businesses want to grow and dominate their space, the natural order favors this until the creature grows too big and can no longer exist. The banks learned this long ago. Maybe pre-Revolutionary War they already controlled the money. Maybe the Revolutionary War offered a moment to break this cycle. If it did it didn’t hold up. By the U.S. Civil War the banks were back in control. What happened through the first half of the 20th century the bank model metastasized into everything. Once vibrant and competitive markets consolidated into protected oligopolies and monopolies. Energy, automobiles, electronics, entertainment. There’s usually either one or maybe 2 or 3 dominant players and they write the laws to protect themselves. It stifles any innovation. They win only as long as no one tries to challenge them. When something breaks through the fog their size and sloth will be their downfall. It’s the literal meaning of the emperor having no clothes. People might be able to look away the first and second time but eventually it becomes to obvious not to see and the tide changes so fast that leviathan can’t keep up. The car companies will keep making crap but the market will keep testing the edges. It might be retrofitting companies, a new company, you can’t predict it. I mean, look at Tesla. Sure, we hate their cars but they changed the landscape. They had the right political product to match a message, sure. But even governments can only squash reality for so long before their tightly grasped fist squeezes too many truths between the knuckles. Our job is test for the vulnerabilities and exploit them when found.