In an interview on “Stacy on the Right” with host Stacy Washington, Heartland Institute President James Taylor discussed a pending Trump administration move to rescind the EPA’s “endangerment finding” on carbon dioxide. Taylor argued the policy wrongly classified CO2 as harmful, and said repealing the rule would boost affordable, reliable, clean (ARC) energy and improve living standards. “The regulators, the unelected bureaucrats have no right to stifle our economy until and unless Congress passes a law specifically saying carbon dioxide can and should be regulated,” Taylor told Washington. “Another thing that I’d like to see done, Representative Troy Balderson out of Ohio has sponsored legislation, the Affordable Reliable Clean Energy Security Act. What this would do is this would codify that the federal government must not punish affordable sources, conventional energy sources, coal, natural gas, nuclear power.” “In fact, when making determinations about what is an environmentally friendly or green energy source, that you must look at the entirety of environmental factors, not just global warming,” Taylor continued. “Therefore, you have, for example, natural gas and nuclear, especially would be on par and indeed should be preferential to when making these determinations should be on a par with and indeed preferential to wind and solar. If that law, if that bill passes into law again, that’s nothing that the Supreme Court can make an end run around. That is the law of the land. So we’re hoping that will get passed as well.”

STACY WASHINGTON, HOST: Maybe I’m exaggerating just a little bit there, but it feels like we’re all over this hemisphere, kind of like the Monroe Doctrine. Thank you for being with us. Welcoming back to the program, James Taylor, president of the Heartland Institute. James, thank you for joining in. JAMES TAYLOR, HEARTLAND INSTITUTE PRESIDENT: Oh, thank you for having me on. Stacey, you’re one of my favorites. It’s an honor. WASHINGTON: Oh, that is an honor for me. We love your organization. The work that you do is so important for us because we don’t have the research capacity to get all of the details, and Heartland Institute is like, oh, okay, I got you. I’ll give you everything you need to know, and then you’re equipped to deal with friends, relatives, maybe they’re your enemies that you’re talking with and you’re debating. So I’m so glad that you could join us tonight. And especially on this, you are joining us to talk about the announcement tomorrow. There’s a huge announcement, and it’s about deregulation, which that’s one of my favorite jams, that and, you know, real energy, coal. You never would have been able to convince me that I would have been crazy for coal, but here we are. TAYLOR: The truth has caught up with us all. WASHINGTON: We’re just living, just trying to live our lives. TAYLOR: So yes, basically the background is this. The Trump administration is poised to announce that they are going to rescind, in other words, get rid of the endangerment finding. And the background of this is, back in 2007, Massachusetts sued the federal government because the federal government was not regulating and restricting carbon dioxide. So in 1970, the Clean Air Act, Congress passed a law that directed the regulation of pollutants, and it named a number of them. And these were pollutants that we commonly refer to as pollutants, soot, sulfur dioxide, things that directly impact human health when you breathe them in. It does not mention carbon dioxide, could have, did not, for a reason. So Massachusetts said, well, EPA is required to regulate carbon dioxide under the Clean Air Act, even though it was omitted in the bill. And the Supreme Court, with different justices than are on the Supreme Court today, in a five to four decision, said, yes, if the EPA determines that carbon dioxide endangers human health and welfare, it must regulate carbon dioxide. So that was in 2007, that was in George W. Bush’s term, and the EPA then kind of punted on the issue. They didn’t make a finding one way or the other. So as soon as the Obama administration took power, they fulfilled an Obama campaign promise to bankrupt coal, and they ruled that carbon dioxide is endangering, directly harms human health and welfare. And that is totally against the science. Carbon dioxide is odorless. You can’t see it. It is essential to life on Earth. Without it in the atmosphere, all life on the planet would die. In fact, a few hundred years ago, we came perilously close to that low threshold where all life on Earth would die. Moreover, the asserted extreme weather events that are always predicted have not materialized. Hurricanes are becoming less frequent and severe. Droughts less frequent and severe. Tornadoes less frequent and severe. There is no meaningful, significant weather event that is becoming worse as a result of warming temperatures. So their argument is, because carbon dioxide, it doesn’t directly impact human health, but because it warms temperatures, temperatures harm human health and welfare. Therefore, you must restrict it. And oh, by the way, peer-reviewed scientific studies have found that cold kills approximately 20 times more people around the globe and in virtually every country than heat. Here in the United States, 50% more people die during the winter months than the summer months. So the Trump administration finally is correcting that wrong. In the announcement tomorrow, there’s speculation whether it will be a full elimination of the endangerment finding or whether it will apply solely to transportation. In other words, electric vehicles. Hopefully it will apply to both. If it only applies to vehicles, then our hope is that’s a first step and power plants will come next. Because we need affordable, reliable, clean energy. And clean, by the way, coal, natural gas, nuclear power. When you look at all environmental factors, not just global warming. On virtually every environmental index, wind and solar are far more destructive to the environment than our conventional energy sources. WASHINGTON: So I love how the Democrats called it the endangerment finding. Because if they named it what it really was, everyone would have been up in arms. But they were able to circumvent a natural negative reaction to what they were trying to do by calling it something vague and nebulous. The endangerment finding. When I hear that, it makes me think of like bald eagles and, you know, like animals that are in danger. It does not make me think about that. Yeah, well, yeah, yeah. People dumping those too. There’s a news story out about some place here, they don’t know what to do because they’ve had wind turbines dumped and they’re not sure what to do about it. Because they don’t decompose. They don’t go away. So they’re not sure what to do. TAYLOR: Fiberglass or the wind turbines, they end up harming human health. The mining of rare earth minerals are necessary for wind and solar power, are the most environmentally destructive and human harmful activities on the planet. And when you say an end run, what this really is, what the endangerment finding, we’ll call it that for now so everyone understands what we’re talking about. What the endangerment finding is, it’s an end run around democracy. Congress chose not to pass a law specifically naming carbon dioxide. They could do it today and it would be effective because courts merely interpret what the law says. Now, by the Supreme Court ruling that EPA must make this determination, this is really the heart of the issue. What we hope, the endangerment finding, repealing this under the Trump administration is a first step. And by the way, Trump is so courageous. No Republican would likely have done this, although it’s necessary to be done. They’d be afraid of backlash from environmentalists. Trump says, I don’t care. I’m doing what’s right for the American people. The next step, there’s really two next steps. Number one, I would love to see, whether it’s just like Massachusetts sued EPA in the first place, I’d love to see a red state sue and bring this back in front of the Supreme Court, the Massachusetts versus EPA decision. There are different justices right now. Basically, if there was a Democrat elected president in four years, eight years, 12 years, they will try to rescind what Trump is doing tomorrow. But if we reverse the Supreme Court decision, which should be reversed, then EPA has no right. The regulators, the unelected bureaucrats have no right to stifle our economy until and unless Congress passes a law specifically saying carbon dioxide can and should be regulated. Two, another thing that I’d like to see done, Representative Troy Balderson out of Ohio has sponsored legislation, the Affordable Reliable Clean Energy Security Act. What this would do is this would codify that the federal government must not punish affordable sources, conventional energy sources, coal, natural gas, nuclear power. In fact, when making determinations about what is an environmentally friendly or green energy source, that you must look at the entirety of environmental factors, not just global warming. Therefore, you have, for example, natural gas and nuclear, especially would be on par and indeed should be preferential to when making these determinations should be on a par with and indeed preferential to wind and solar. If that law, if that bill passes into law again, that’s nothing that the Supreme Court can make an end run around. That is the law of the land. So we’re hoping that will get passed as well. WASHINGTON: I am so with you on that. My gosh, just think about what we could do if we didn’t have to worry about bureaucrats. And let me let me rephrase. Think of what our energy industry could do if they did not have to worry about the regulators, if the endangerment finding was no longer on their back. Think of the development, the future planning, the all the things that they could do. And I say that because in California, like while we’re talking about low gas prices in Arkansas and even here in Missouri, the prices are so nice and low across the country. You have a full shutdown of refinery operations expected by April in the Benicia refinery. This is going to send their gas prices through the roof and they already pay more than any other American in the country. California has the highest gas prices and the refineries are running away from them because the regulations and the policies are just so bad they can’t they can’t make a living there anymore. They’re moving to Texas. TAYLOR: Right and not just what our industries can do, but how it will benefit the American people. So at the Hartman Institute, we published a policy brief. It’s called the Affordable, Reliable, and Clean Energy Scorecard, where we give an objective score for affordability, reliability, and environmental impact on competing energy sources. And you will often hear on the left, they will say over and over again, wind and solar are already less expensive than coal, are already less expensive than natural gas. Them saying it doesn’t make it true. In our study, we cite peer-reviewed literature, peer-reviewed studies that find, for example, if you were to power the grid with wind power, that raises electricity prices sevenfold over natural gas, which is our least expensive source. And if you power the grid with solar power, that raises prices more than ten times what we pay with natural gas. So this is unleashing the power, the spirit, and the living standards of the American people. It’s absolutely necessary. WASHINGTON: And I also just would like a Democrat to explain to me why any American should want to pay more for any of their energy boondoggle ideas. Because everything you’re describing costs more, and we have less reliability. And that’s just what we expect. We have grown to expect to be able to take a light switch, just flip it one way on, the other way off. Grid reliability is kind of built into what we expect, and you can’t have that with wind or solar. There just isn’t any. TAYLOR: ight. It’s first world civilization versus the third world. The third world, which is mired in poverty, which is mired in poor living standards, short lifespans, largely because they can’t power hospitals. This is an essential component, affordable electricity, affordable energy for our living standards. And the justification that is presented by the global warming activists, it’s a belief system. It’s not based on facts. But what we’re looking at right now, when they say global warming is such a threat, what we’re looking at now is merely a restoration of carbon dioxide in warmer temperatures. For most of the Earth’s existing temperatures have been much warmer than today. For most of the Earth’s existence, carbon dioxide levels have been double, triple, or higher than they are today. When they make these comparisons about the hottest years on record, whatever, they’re only going back a hundred years, and they do that deliberately. A hundred years ago, we were emerging from the Little Ice Age, which was the coldest period since the dawn of human civilization. The Little Ice Age brought increased extreme weather events, increased famine, increased plague, and actually declining global population, because it was a killer. What we are going through now is merely a restoration, and we need to warm temperatures and increase carbon dioxide levels significantly to get back to what is the norm, and what has always been beneficial to life on Earth. WASHINGTON: Yeah, the planet is the greenest it’s ever been. So, I mean, we’re doing okay without their intervention. They’re like people who run HOAs and in subdivisions. And you just want to change your paint color on your door, and you got to go through a 50-step process and meet with a whole bunch of people and sit in front of people who are sitting behind what should be a folding table, but somebody bought a wood one, and you got to go before these architectural review boards for a simple change on the paint color of your door or your garage, which is why I absolutely hate HOAs. That’s what these people are like. They’re like the HOAs of our energy industry. TAYLOR: Well, it’s much worse, because at least when an HOA says that you can’t have a red door, at least their opinion is based on the fact that you might have a red door. But when the climate activists say that we need to restrict carbon dioxide emissions because it’s harming human health and welfare, because it’s killing people, because it’s reducing crop production, all of them are false. And not only are those assertions false, it’s exactly the opposite. Warming temperatures, more carbon dioxide means, as you pointed out, NASA satellites have measured this. There’s been a substantial greening of the earth. In other words, an increase in vegetation and foliage throughout the earth traced directly to the increase in carbon dioxide. That’s what plants breathe. So the HOA may want to get in your business more than they should, but at least they’re not making up lies about what you did to your door to impose their will upon you like the climate activists are doing. WASHINGTON: Yeah, they really, they’re going off of what you said you’d like to do. At least there’s that. I agree with you. It’s worse, it’s so much more dastardly. And the HOAs are pretty dastardly, but they at least are dealing with raw facts. So let’s talk a little bit, I want to go a little further with what you just said there about the greening. I just remember learning, I think I might have been third grade, please don’t hold me to this everybody, but somewhere in my early grammar school years or later grammar school years, but it was school and I was very, very young, I learned that humans breathe in the oxygen, which is what the plants make, and human beings breathe out the CO2, which is what the plants breathe in. And so it’s a symbiotic relationship and we can never really like outdo the plants and if we ever feel like it’s imbalanced, you just plant more plants, plant more trees, and that’s why you should have plants inside your house. And you know, then they had us grow a little plant at school and take it home to our moms for Mother’s Day. And that’s what I remember. Now we have the left actually going against science again. TAYLOR: Right. The ideal amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere for plant growth is about 1,200 parts per million. Right now, even with the increase, the restoration of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere, we’re merely in the 400s. We need to triple the amount of carbon dioxide to get to the point where we have an ideal environment for plants. When you have more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, as I mentioned, you have more foliage. You don’t just have more foliage growing. You have greater crop production. And on top of that, plants are struggling. At current carbon dioxide levels, they’re struggling to be healthy. They want 1,200 parts per million. It’s like if you’re in a low oxygen environment. If you’re at the top of Mount Everest and you’re trying to breathe without an oxygen tank, it’s very difficult. You are significantly weakened. That’s how plants are today. It’s ironic that many times the climate activists will point to say beetle infestations, which by the way, have always occurred. It’s not caused by global warming, but talking about trees that are dying. Well, the reason why trees are dying from beetle infestations is because they are so substantially weakened by a lack of CO2 that they don’t have the natural strength that they otherwise would to fight off pests and diseases. More carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is better for life on earth, better for vegetation, and better for animals, better for humans who rely on vegetation as the foundation of the entire food web and the entire ecological system. WASHINGTON: It’s kind of unbelievable what we can learn when we actually just look at what’s happening on the earth and compare it with science and what we know, as opposed to just making stuff up out of our foot and, you know, calling it science. I find it shocking that we have not enough CO2 and they’re shutting down coal plants under the guise of eliminating CO2 output because it’s supposed to be dangerous for the country. Meanwhile, the Chinese are putting up, you know, I guess it’s one plant a week, one coal plant a week, because they want to industrialize and be like us. TAYLOR: Yeah, we should thank them for doing that because more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has always been beneficial to life on earth. Hopefully we’ll be doing the same and I think it’s worth pointing out and I think it should be pointed out, as I mentioned earlier, the Trump administration, Donald Trump himself, is so courageous because this has been a taboo. You know, we at the Hartman Institute, we talk with legislators and policymakers around the country and oftentimes we hear everything you say makes sense, I agree with you, but I fear that this is going to get me all sorts of scorn in the press and from some of my constituents. And Donald Trump says, no, I’m going to stand up for truth, I’m going to stand up for the American people, and I’m going to get rid of this endangerment finding. Now, this is a first step. There needs to be many more steps, but Donald Trump is doing something that I don’t think any other president, Democrat, or Republican would have done and I thank him immensely for doing this. WASHINGTON: So do I. It’s almost as if when President Trump is in the Oval Office behind the Resolute Desk with his amazing cabinet, he says, you know what, somewhere out there there’s a Stacey Washington who wants cheap energy and I’m here for it. And somewhere out there I’m pumping gas and I just kind of look off into the distance and I get a warm feeling in my heart and I think somewhere someone’s working on making my energy cheaper. And that someone is President Trump. He has been so, like, he was great at this during his first term and now he’s back and he’s really doing it again. Like he really, he promised and now he’s actually delivering on that. I hope people are taking note because we need to expect all of our elected officials to do the same. TAYLOR: Absolutely, and it’s not just less expensive electricity for the sake of greed and accumulating gold as the as the left likes to say. When I grew up in poverty, I grew up in welfare projects, I grew up on food stamps, I remember my mom had to struggle. She’d have to lay out, okay, this money I have to set aside to pay for energy, this money I set aside for food, this money I set aside for clothing, this money I set aside for health care. And if you have to spend more of your money on energy, on electricity, on gasoline prices, what that means is that the American people have far less money to invest in healthy nutritious food, far less money to invest in regular health care, far less money to invest in housing that, you know, we’re not living in these in these slums like I grew up in. It’s more than just money, it’s raising the living standards of the American people and Donald Trump gets that.

Watch RealClear’s Maggie Miller interview Taylor about America’s energy future:
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