The Trump Environmental Protection Agency just decided to no longer inflate the monetized benefits of EPA air quality regulations with imaginary deaths prevented. This has put the greens into orbit.

The New York Times headline blared “EPA to Stop Considering Lives Saved When Setting Rules on Air Pollution.” The article continues: “In a reversal, the agency plans to calculate only the cost to industry when setting pollution limits, and not the monetary value of saving human lives, documents show.”

EPA chief Lee Zeldin responded on X: “Yet another dishonest, fake news claim courtesy of the New York Times. Not only is the EXACT OPPOSITE of this headline the actual truth, but the Times is already VERY WELL AWARE that EPA will still be considering lives saved when setting pollution limits. The Times’ unyielding commitment to destroying journalism is second to none.” (RELATED: How One White House Council Is Fighting To End ‘Regulatory Reign Of Terror’)

What is going on?

The evaluation of a proposed rule’s costs and benefits has been a commonsense administrative requirement before setting new regulations since the Reagan administration. Until the Clinton administration, so-called cost-benefit analysis was an effective tool in stopping costly overregulation, particularly at the EPA. But the Clinton EPA figured out how to game the cost-benefit analysis process in order to issue its most expensive regulations – air quality rules that were eventually used by the Obama EPA to destroy half of the U.S. coal........

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