EPA Continues Talk of Regulatory Rollbacks
Robert Conquest’s third law of politics says that the actions of unelected bureaucrats make perfect sense if you assume that they are bad faith actors wanting to destroy the system from within. The interesting thing about this “law” is that it is true no matter who is in office depending on its interpretation. For example, during the Biden Administration, it was fair to say that the EPA and other executive agencies were trying to put the citizenry in a vise, slowing economic prosperity. With the changing of the guard and regulatory rollbacks, an argument can be made for the new members of the Environmental Protection Agency acting against the best interests of the environment, while the people (including truckers) prosper.
Details
All of this is to say that on March 12th, 2025, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced 31 different changes in the agency in what he calls “the most momentous day in the history of the EPA.” Chief among them are reviewing the Greenhouse Gas Emissions Standards for Heavy-Duty Vehicles rules and the Heavy-Duty Nitrous Oxide rule.
Why would the EPA want to lower standards on heavy-duty vehicle trucks when its stated purpose is to protect the environment? The simple answer is that the juice is simply not worth the squeeze. When talking specifically about the NOx rule, the EPA said that it would add “significant costs that will make the products our trucks deliver, like food and other household goods, more expensive.”
Conclusion
Despite all of the doom-and-gloom that may surround detractors of the current EPA leadership, the trucking industry has still made tremendous strides in reducing emissions such as NOx in the previous decades as diesel technology continues to improve. Perhaps the simplest way to reduce the effect of emissions from the trucking industry without devastating the economy would be to follow a specific California rule about slowly but surely phasing out older vehicles, which recently has banned three model years over eight years. Simple and effective, this maneuver would allow the EPA to balance the economical and environmental needs of the citizens of the United States while minimizing the accusations of political sabotage from both sides of the aisle.
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