America's Talking - EPA Proposes Massive Deregulations for Greenhouse Gases

Episode Date: August 2, 2025

(The Center Square) – The Environmental Protection Agency is proposing to rescind an Obama-era environmental finding impacting the automobile industry. The EPA chief says it costs $1 trillion in regulations. Lee Zeldin, administrator of the EPA, made the announcement Tuesday in the backdrop of an auto dealership in Indianapolis, Ind., to rescind the 2009 Endangerment Finding, which the Trump EPA claims is responsible for the Biden administration's electric vehicle mandate — pushing to reduce the production of gas-powered vehicles.Support this podcast: https://secure.anedot.com/franklin-news-foundation/ce052532-b1e4-41c4-945c-d7ce2f52c38a?source_code=xxxxxxFull story: http://thecentersquare.com/national/article_70d99dc1-e8ff-4d4b-a2f0-5a742be07519.html Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Greetings, everyone, and welcome to America's Talking, powered by the Center Square. I'm Dan McAelib, chief content officer at Franklin News Foundation, publisher of the Center Square Newswire Service. President Donald Trump's Environmental Protection Agency is proposing rolling back Obama-era regulations on greenhouse gas emissions. Lee Zeldin, administrator of the EPA, said this week that the administration is looking to rescind the 2009 endangerment finding, which directly led to the Biden Biden administration's electric vehicle mandate, pushing to reduce the production of gas-powered vehicles. Joining me to discuss this is the Center Square Regional Editor, Steve Wilson. Steve, what is the 2009 endangerment finding,

and what does the APA's plan to rescind it mean for everyday Americans? Well, what it is is a finding that says that greenhouse gases are at pollute, And that doesn't sound like a big deal it really is, because what that's meant is these car manufacturers have had to reduce the amount of CO2 coming out of your tailpipes. And how have they done that? They have scaled down these motors. It used to be 10 years ago, you could get a V6 in just about any just basic family car. Toyota Camry, Chevrolet, which by the way no longer exists, Honda Corde, Nissan. ultima, but now they've had to downsize engines. They've had to go to these turbo

fours. They've had to go to hybrids. For example, look at the Toyota Camry. Ten years ago, you could get an optional V6 for $31,500 and the car started with just a non-turbo four cylinder at about $23,000. Now it's all hybrid. You don't have a choice. It used to be the hybrid was just an option. Now it starts, it $28,400, and the range topping version is 346, and that's got a hybrid. So you don't have any choice. You're just stuck with a smaller engine, and these smaller engines are trying to pull around bigger cars and are trying to do the work that a bigger V6 or back in the day a V8 would do.

and I think the problem is for the consumer is that these engines, they can get better gas mileage, but you have to drive with a very light foot. And also, they're more expensive to repair. They probably don't last as long. The hybrids, even though it's not an electric where you have to totally tear the car apart to get the batteries out, you're still going to have to replace those batteries probably about the $200,000 mark. mile marks. So you've got a lot of, this brings a lot of issues, but the thing I will say, this is not going to happen overnight. You're not going to see V6s and Camrys tomorrow.

The auto industry, it takes years for them to work on these cars, and it's going to take several years for this to filter down. My guess is they're going to wait and see what happens with the next presidential election before they start making product decisions from an engineering standpoint. So no immediate impact on consumers, but there could be a longer-term impact, as you say, depending on what happens with the next presidential election. The Trump administration has said that this Obama-era emissions regulation led to the EV mandate that came out under the Biden administration, although American consumers have shown less and less proclivity to buy E. EVs, yes, there was a run on electric vehicle purchases early on, but after that initial run, electric vehicle sales have slowed somewhat. Does this impact that at all, you think? Think with electric vehicles, consumers are finding that there's a lot of inconvenience.

There's that range anxiety, which you look at even the best electric vehicle, they say they have a 300-mile range. Well, that's with a lot of caveats. If it's very, hot outside like I live in coastal Mississippi. It's hotter than the surface of the sun. The car actually has to keep the cooling on and use battery power to keep the batteries within the correct temperature range. So that's an issue. So that cuts your range. If it's very cold, that cuts your range. And then it's finding a charging station. I mean, it takes, what, five minutes to fill up a big truck with a big gas tank, whereas with a with a, with a, with a, an electric car, the best case scenario to fast charger is maybe 30 minutes and maybe an 80% charge. And if you look at the instruction manuals of some of these electric cars, it actually says not to do this too often because it can damage the battery. And then, yeah, the issue of infrastructure, there has been a push to build more electric charging stations or whatever. But when you get into, you know, like middle America,

the Midwest and further out west where you've got these vast open spaces, that infrastructure doesn't really exist, not to the point where there's enough charging stations. So that's another issue. Is someone who almost ran out of gas in southwest Texas in between towns can attest. You do not want to be in that scenario. But I think another thing with the electric cars that's really cramped there, the consumer enthusiasm for them, is they're expensive and they're inconvenient. And people want something that they can just go and do what they need to do.

Because if you want to charge your electric vehicle to its full capacity at home, you've got to have an electrician install a 240 kilovol plug in there. And that's not cheap. I mean, you're talking probably $1,000 to $2,000. So this requires a lot of investment on the part of the consumer. They've got to plan their life around finding charging stations because not all of them work. Some of them are down for maintenance. So it's an issue.

And I think this is going to help to where they're going to let the market decide. If electric cars are better and consumers think they're better, fine. But the federal government won't be mandating that we have to have these as our primary transportation. Steve, thank you for joining us today. Listeners can keep up with this story and more at thecenter square.com.