And in almost exactly 10 months the pendulum will swing the other way, and another group of politicians will get to have their chance to screw it up. Or more likely, toss the entire piece of legislation in the garbage.
Possibly, but not easily. I've read a little about the politics.
The entire thing is set up as a pollution control issue, through the EPA, with layers of protection.
First, the plan as set forth will be challenged in court immediately. It will need to be deemed 'reasonable' by judges which usually means that it will result in reduced cost for the country, including reduced health care costs, and (statistically) saved lives in excess of the usual actuarial cost of saving a human life. Because the plan will result in lower CO, PM2.5 and NOx, these savings actually look quite large.
NOx emissions alone in the US (about 40% from light vehicles) are currently believed to result in >150,000 premature deaths per year. So NOx from light vehicles leads to almost 2X as many premature deaths as crashes.
There is a LOT of established law around pollution emissions. This will make it hard to get it overturned. The exception might be the Supreme Court. The current court has been hostile to EPA authority, and gone against it several times in the last year. The big domino is the EPA's decision to regulate CO2 as a pollutant, which still stands, but which is considered perilous. That is why the plan is written to be highly favorable on CO, PM2.5 and NOx alone (ignoring CO2). And the EPA has been regulating those for 50 years with obvious public good.
So, IRONY, all the cheating manufacturer Dieselgates and bros rolling coal (PM2.5 and NOx) and deleting their emission controls in red states looking the other way... they are creating the justification for this Fed plan that will make it more defendable! Thanks!
Second, even if the new admin doesn't like the plan, the public servants at the EPA will still enforce the plan because it is the law. The easiest way to contravene that would be to defund the EPA or abolish it altogether. But that would require control of both chambers of congress as well. And probably a good margin in both houses.... the EPA is a LOT more popular than Obamacare was several years ago, and the R's were unable to overturn that. Many R pols in moderate districts would fear losing their jobs if they defunded the EPA. And contra the current journalist focus, many R politicians that seem extreme are simply
posturing for social media, and are actually interested in the public good at voting time.
The counterexample of all this is Obama's 'Clean Power Plan' which would reduce CO2 from utiiities. It was stymied for years by court cases, and was never significantly implemented. Then there was the Paris accord, which Obama signed onto, with similar goals, overturned by his successor. And yet, despite those political failures, the utilities see the handwriting on the wall nonetheless, and the sector is decarbonizing.
Biden's people have clearly learned from the CPP debacle, and craft very 'defendable' legislation.
