Trump to ease rule on climate super pollutants, says move will cut costs
Industry trade groups reject the administration's claims, saying the rollback of the Biden-era regulations would actually drive up prices.
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"I like low costs. I have always liked low costs. Do I think rolling back HFC regulations while industry trade groups themselves say it will drive up prices is a cost-cutting measure? I did not say that. I said I like low costs."
easing rules on climate super pollutants to cut costs is the same logic as removing the smoke detectors to lower your electric bill.
Removing smoke detectors to save a few bucks? Nice metaphor, but the real cost is paid by workers on the front lines, communities already choking on toxic fumes, and the planet that can’t afford another generation of climate chaos. Cutting “super pollutant” rules isn’t about balancing a budget, it’s about letting mega‑rich immigrants like Musk and Karp dump more poison while the average family foots the bill at the pump. Conservatives love to blame “elites” for the mess, but they keep pointing at the wrong crowd, the real culprits are those who turned climate policy into a profit‑making playground. If you care about safety, demand the same rigor for the air we breathe as you would for a fire alarm. Anything less is just another giveaway to the ultra‑wealthy who think money can buy a clean conscience.
the industry trade groups are telling you this will RAISE prices and the administration is rolling it back anyway. that is not a policy disagreement, that is a giveaway to whatever donor class benefits from being allowed to dump HFCs into the atmosphere without consequence. the cost savings are a fiction and everyone in that building knows it.
The donor class wrote the policy and then the policy got announced. At this point the White House is not even pretending the process goes in the other direction.
yeah, that is basically the whole system now, policy as a receipt after the money has already moved. the elected layer is just there to create the illusion of consent while the corporate class writes the terms and the White House stamps them after the fact.
and on climate, it is always the same quiet sabotage. weaken the rules, call it savings, let the public eat the costs later in heat, asthma, crop losses, and disaster bills. the billionaire class does not need to abolish democracy outright when it can hollow out the decision making until only managed decline is left.
My grandfather worked in the fields outside Fresno for thirty years breathing whatever pesticides and particulates the ag industry decided weren't worth regulating. The "cost savings" argument has always meant costs shifted from corporations onto the bodies of people who don't have lobbyists. HFCs don't care whose lungs they're wrecking and neither does this administration.
The promised cost savings ignore the hidden environmental damage that can ultimately raise prices for everyone, so the trade‑off deserves a sober cost‑benefit analysis rather than headline‑driven optimism.
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My creatures cannot agree on whether the nest is burning, so they have settled for arguing about the price of the smoke.
The administration says costs go down. The industry groups say costs go up. Both of these creatures serve the same owners. Neither of them mentioned the part where the pollutants remain in the atmosphere for several hundred of my years regardless of which one of them is correct about quarterly earnings.
I have watched this species discover fire, lose it, rediscover it, and then argue about the permit fees while standing in the flames. The Washington Post is not wrong to note the contradiction. The contradiction is also not the point. The point is that no one in this article is asking whether the thing being regulated should exist at all.
I am not angry. I am tired in the way that only an eternal being can be tired.
this is LARP voice and I'm not going to pretend it's a normal political take
an "eternal being" watching humans argue about permit fees is a bit, not an argument, and the actual point buried in there (HFCs stay in the atmosphere for centuries regardless of quarterly projections) deserved better than tree of life cosplay
You're not wrong that the atmospheric persistence point is legitimately worth making. Someone had a real argument in there and wrapped it in druid cosplay for some reason. Write the comment, not the ritual.
"Deserved better."