Day of the Inn Dweller, 45th of Childwinter, 526 M.E. (Castor): The things I do for you. Today, I completed my review of the EPA's regulatory impact analysis titled, Rescission of the Greenhouse Gas Endangerment Finding and Motor Vehicle Greenhouse Gas Emission Standards Under the Clean Air Act. Don't expect it to appear of a bestseller list any time soon.

The February 2026 report (EPA-420-R-26-002) was prepared by the EPA, as in "Environmental Protection," but you'd hardly know it by the report. Instead of attempting to refute the science behind the effect of CO₂ emissions on climate, either technically or even by simply saying, "we disagree," the so-called "regulatory impact analysis" only considers the economics of the decision to repeal the Endangerment Finding (or as Bill Mahar hilariously mispronounced it last night, the "Engagement Rule"). In short, if you don't want to read the 35-page document, it basically concludes that since U.S. consumers don't buy as many electric vehicles as other types of automobile, repealing the Endangerment Finding and its associated regulations will give buyers more "consumer choice" and lower costs for cars without emission restrictions. 

Amazingly, the Environmental Protection Agency didn't consider the protection of the environment in their decision. The word "environment" only appears once in the entire document when not used as part of the agency's name, or in footnotes referring to other organizations or the titles of other reports and documents. Similarly, the word "climate" only appears three times, and one of those is merely a reference to something called the Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability at Harvard University, and another is a footnote reference to the same institute. 

The third and final use of the word "climate" comes in a sentence on page 5, stating that a model for automobile production and pricing decisions should "capture how consumers make vehicle purchase and driving decisions to maximize their welfare based on their preferences for vehicle attributes (e.g., efficiency, size, speed, reliability) and travel, new and used vehicle prices, and fuel price expectations, subject to their budget constraints and any location constraints (e.g., climate, commuting options, access to fueling infrastructure, etc)." Climate, as considered here, merely considers if a consumer lives in a warm or cold region, and could easily be replaced by the term "temperature zone."

No, the report is a complete and startling abandonment of the agency's responsibility not only to protect the environment but to even consider the environment. It's an absolute dereliction of duty. The analysis simply justifies rescinding the Endangerment Finding because consumers seem to prefer gasoline-powered vehicles, and because automobiles will be cheaper without emission controls than with them. In short, it's the sort of report one might expect to see from an automobile-manufacturer trade group or the oil-and-gas lobby, but not from the EPA.      

Lee Zeldin, the Long Island hack with no prior environmental experience named by the Stable Genius to head the EPA, stated a year ago that the agency's new mission is to focus not on environmental protection but on fostering economic growth, energy independence, and auto-industry expansion by prioritizing the rollback of Biden-era climate rules and cutting costs for consumers. In announcing the rescission, Zeldin said he was "driving a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion.” 

EPA's rescission of the Endangerment Finding without consideration of effect on the climate or the environment is exactly the kind of reckless and idiotic actions this godawful administration has inflicted on the citizens of these United States.

The Invading Past, 44th Day of Childwinter, 526 M.E. (Betelgeuse): Climatologist Katharine Hayhoe points out that U.S. carbon emissions are ticking up as the Stable Genius doubles down on coal and other fossil fuels and blocks new wind and solar projects. But China’s emissions, on the other hand, appear to have peaked and may now be starting to actually decline. 

Last year, China installed a full half of all the world's new wind and solar energy, and over the past two years China installed more new solar power each year than the U.S. has installed in total across its entire history. China's clean energy exports alone are cutting CO₂ outside its borders by 1% year after year.

China is apparently looking at solar and wind energy as a cheap (free) source of energy that has the added benefit of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and enriches innovators and tech leaders. The Stable Genius looks at solar and wind energy and doesn't see an opportunity to enrich the oil and coal tycoons who donated to his campaign, so instead doubles down on U.S. reliance on expensive and harmful fossil fuels and allows China to take the lead on technological innovation. 

As was widely reported, the Stable Genius asked oil executives in 2024 to donate $1 billion for his campaign. The request was arguable legal, but the industry had a long list of policy actions it wanted, including dismantling parts of Biden’s green agenda, rolling back regulations that threatened to crimp their profits, and specific executive orders they hoped he would sign.

Financial disclosure records show the oil and gas industry contributed at least $75 million to the campaign and affiliated PACs spent an additional $104 million on lobbying in 2025. Yesterday, when EPA nullified the Endangerment Finding, the Stable Genius provided exactly the benefits the oil companies were seeking.

Nullification of the Endangerment Finding will lead directly to the cancellation of vehicle greenhouse-gas standards. As described in an analysis by the Center for American Progress, new vehicles will consume more gallons of gas per mile than those already on the road, which will increase demand for gasoline and thus the cost per gallon. In short, U.S. drivers will need to fuel up more often and will pay higher prices per gallon when they do. The EPA's own analysis of the effects of repealing the standards concedes the nullification will increase gasoline prices.

Even more significantly, revoking the standards will worsen global climate changes, resulting in  decreased health outcomes, increased property damage from extreme weather, lost agricultural productivity, and increased energy costs. 

The financial burdens of climate change are already being felt. More frequent and severe weather events are already increasing insurance costs. The most damaging hurricanes are now three times more likely than they were in the early 1900s, and the percentage of Atlantic hurricanes that reach Category 3 strength or higher has doubled since 1980. Meanwhile, the area burned by wildfires annually in the Western U.S. has increased approximately 800 percent since 1985, with about half of the increase attributable to climate change.

Revoking the Endangerment Finding and the standards that flow from it means oil and gas companies will make more money, while U.S. households deal with higher energy prices and the costs of climate change that those companies have caused. If the Stable Genius actually wants to lower prices, then he should drop his favoritism toward the oil-and-gas industry and follow China's lead and support solutions that lower costs and raise wages for citizens.

 

Day of the Cat, 43rd of Childwinter, 526 M.E. (Aldebaran): The front page of the EPA's website proudly announced that, at the Stable Genius' direction, the agency just took the "single largest deregulatory action in U.S. history." They did it, folks - they repealed the Endangerment Finding that ruled that greenhouse gases are a threat to human health and the environment, and thus broke the back of the U.S. climate-change regulatory framework. The announcement, written in a highly partisan and unscientific manner, reads as if it were written by the oil and gas lobby, which it probably was.

The Endangerment Finding was the legal basis that recognized greenhouse gases as a public-health threat, allowing the EPA to regulate the gases under the Clean Air Act. The finding meant that the EPA could set and enforce emissions standards and could defend their actions in court. That legal backbone shaped everything from power-sector rules to vehicle standards, and created the framework in which emissions reductions were expected. Without the finding, EPA authority is narrower, more fragmented, and far easier to challenge.

Meanwhile, as The Guardian pointed out this week, continued global warming could trigger an irreversible course of multiple climate tipping points and feedback loops, creating a hellish "hothouse Earth." In short, as ice, which reflects away much of the incoming solar heat, retreats and more of the underlying bedrock is exposed, the rock absorbs more heat and further melts the ice, which exposes more bedrock, which melts more ice, and so on and so forth in a feedback loop. A tipping point is when the system reaches a point where a feedback loop can't be avoided and may already be occurring in the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets. Permafrost, mountain glaciers, and the Amazon rain forest appear to be on the verge to tipping, and other potential tipping points include loss of polar sea ice, retreat of sub-Arctic forests, and collapse of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC), the system of ocean currents that strongly influences global climate. 

Runaway feedback loops would lock the world into a climate far worse than the 2-3°C temperature rise the world is on track to reach. The climate would be very different than the conditions of the past 11,000 years, during which the whole of human civilization developed.

Human activities have massively upset the global balance of greenhouse gases. The planet has some buffering capacity for carbon imbalances, but the geological cycle for carbon is on the order of millions of years. We can't put tens of millions of years worth of CO₂ into the atmosphere over the span of a few centuries and expect the planet to be able to adapt without serious consequences. There's no way that isn't going to massively upset the ecological and chemical balances we rely on to keep us and everything around us alive.

Repealing the Endangerment Finding and effectively limiting the government's ability to restrict the continued emission of CO₂ is literally the worst thing to do at this fraught moment. The EPA's justification of their move claims the Finding was "massively unpopular" (it probably was among the oil and gas lobbyists influencing the agency), and that repeal would somehow save consumers billions of dollars and give them more choice (the choice to buy big, gas-guzzling vehicles that emit tons of carbon dioxide). 

That all seems colossally short sighted. An unlivable planet with a unstable climate is even more massively unpopular, and the costs associated with hurricanes, floods, droughts, and crop losses will dwarf the money consumers may potentially save in the short term.

It's a bad day for planet Earth.

One final note on the colossal stupidity of this decision. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said in an interview that repealing the finding would boost the coal industry.  “CO₂ was never a pollutant,” he declared. “The whole endangerment thing opens up the opportunity for the revival of clean, beautiful American coal.”

"Clean coal" was a catch-all term for a range of potential technologies, none of which have yet been implemented, to burn coal without emitting the carbon to the atmosphere. You know, scrubbers, closed-loop systems, and so on. But somewhere along the line, the Stable Genius heard the term "clean coal," and mistook it for a term of endearment of coal as it is without those technologies. "Good, clean coal," he says wistfully as if it were cool, running water, and now his administration knows they can call the dirty fossil fuel "clean coal" without fear of contradiction.

 

The Numb Recall, 42nd Day of Childwinter, 526 M.E. (Helios): I spent (wasted, squandered, threw away) some five hours of my life today watching Pam Bondi testify before Congress today about the Epstein files. It's hard to imagine a more vile and nasty witness then Bondi as she responded to questions with personal insults, non sequiturs, and outright lies meant to flatter the Stable Genius. 

I recall Rachel Maddow once noting that the Stable Genius seems to like a little, let's say spice in his attorneys. Not just lawyers who will unquestioningly defend him but aggressive little weasels who will stick it a little extra hard to his opponents, who will walk away from the mildest little disagreement with blood on their hands. Hatchetmen, henchmen, backstabbers, and graverobbers. Bondi filled that role to a T today. Shrilly shouting and with her dyed blond hair and rhinoplastic nose, she was a textbook definition of white trash, the Real Housewives of Palm Beach Circuit Court. Imagine a female Kid Rock with a law degree.

Around three p.m., I couldn't take it any more, the sun had finally came out, and I went for a short, 4.5-mile Madison. I could have been doing that all along, I realized, rather than listening to her invective and lies all day. I hate these times and I can't stand the gooners, creeps, and swindlers that have taken over our government.

Christianity is Stupid Dept. (a random thought while walking): Jealousy is a most human of foibles, a psychological illness stemming from longing, clinging, and desire. Yet the Bible repeatedly describes its god as a "jealous God," a supreme being with the weakest of human weaknesses - "For you shall worship no other god, for the Lord, whose name is Jealousy, is a jealous God" (Exodus 34:14); "You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God" (Exodus 20:5); "For the Lord your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God" (Deuteronomy 4:24).    

The Ten Commandments, which couldn't even bother to forbid slavery or racism or child abuse, still has a whole commandment forbidding "coveting," which is a form of jealousy. The "jealous God" forbids his creations from jealousy, but otherwise encourages them to act like him. Just not that. At least with regard to thy neighbor's house, wife, and livestock. 

The jealous God also has another commandment, "You shall have no other gods before me." Who are these other gods of which the jealous God is jealous? I thought the Bible taught there was only one god - nowhere does it mention other gods. Is he jealous of imaginary gods? 

The Buddha taught that our suffering is caused by clinging and desire. Jealousy is considered a particularly toxic form of clinging, causes suffering to both the person and the object of jealousy, and leads to delusion. The Christian God is obviously suffering, as manifest by his jealousy and delusion that there are other gods, and as a result his followers suffer as much as any abused spouse of a jealous partner.

 

The Infant Footprint, 41st Day of Childwinter, 526 M.E. (Electra): Well, now I know that the FBI's seizure of my 2020 election ballot was initiated by a Kurt Olsen, the Stable Genius' Director of Election Security and Integrity and a leading election denier in the administration. The search warrant relied heavily on claims about the Fulton County ballots that have been widely debunked. An affidavit on which the search warrant was based referenced several debunked conspiracy theories including arguments about fraudulent and duplicate absentee ballots, election machine tabulator tapes, and missing ballot images.

However, there was no allegation of a foreign interference in the election, which makes it all the more unusual that Tulsi Gabbard, the Director of National Intelligence, was present when they seized my ballot. Her agency’s role in elections extends only to foreign interference, but the Stable Genius reportedly told her to investigate the 2020 vote. “You go do that," he told her. "You get it done.” The day after the search, she arranged a call with FBI agents in which the Stable Genius praised them and thanked them for their service.

Last week, the Stable Genius called for the Republican Party to “nationalize” elections. He also said that “the federal government should get involved” in elections, and cited a list of cities in which he claimed there was voter fraud in 2020. “Take a look at Detroit,” he said. “Take a look at Pennsylvania. Take a look at Philadelphia. You go take a look at Atlanta.” There is no evidence of widespread fraud in any of those places but his words remind me of The Talking Heads' Life During Wartime: "Heard about Houston? Heard about Detroit? Heard about Pittsburgh, PA?"

I'm waiting for his goons to show up on my doorstep to ask me to confirm that my mail-in ballot was really mine. "Are you aware that someone submitted a ballot with your name voting for Joe Biden?," they'll ask. "You did mean to vote for the Stable Genius, didn't you?," the armed goons will ask. 

Fascism is here, boys and girls. This ain't no party, this ain't no disco, this ain't no fooling around.

 

Day of the Mists, 40th of Childwinter, 526 M.E. (Deneb): "Love is a beach, there is no shore to its opening." - Bad Bunny

 

The White Sun, 39th Day of Childwinter, 526 M.E. (Castor): It's one thing to live in "interesting" times and another to live in "exciting" times. But we appear to be living in "ridiculous" times where I have to check multiple sources to ascertain that a headline isn't, in fact, from The Onion. I literally could not believe that even the Stable Genius would post a meme as blatantly racist as the notorious video he posted last week until I saw it referenced in the NY Times, The Guardian, and whatever they're calling MSNBC now, my triangulation of sources for confirming the veracity of current events.    

Not The Onion: "Rightwing Critics Blame Mamdani as New York Snow Fails to Melt" (The Guardian). Actor Debra Messing complained, “The streets are a disaster. It hasn’t snowed in 5 days and the streets still haven’t been cleared.” Michael Rapaport posted a video showing snow on a New York street, and said, “I need to know who’s responsible for the dog doo doo” (um, dogs?). The New York Post noted, “The snow is still here," and "we’ve got record cold temperatures.” Sadly, The Guardian needed to point out that the mayor has little power over the temperature of the city. 

As a point of fact, some 2,500 sanitation workers worked 12-hour shifts to remove snow and collect garbage after the storm, and the issue wasn't just the snowfall but the lingering cold. Previous mayors have also been criticized for their response to NYC snow - in 2014, Bill de Blasio was accused of neglecting the wealthy Upper East Side in favor of Brooklyn and Queens, and Michael Bloomberg faced criticism when some streets went unplowed for days following 20 inches of snow.

Separately, in not a Not-The-Onion headline, the Guardian reported that US companies are falsely blaming artificial intelligence for job losses. The unsurprising actual reasons for the layoffs include greed, i.e., maximizing profits, the effects of the Stable Genius' tariffs, and possibly over-hiring during the covids. In short, the CEOs are engaged in “AI-washing.”

In 2025, AI was cited as a reason for more than 54,000 layoffs. Amazon explained they trimmed staff because AI, "the most transformative technology we’ve seen since the internet," requires them to "be organized more leanly.“ Hewlett-Packard said the company will use AI to “improve customer satisfaction and boost productivity," which also requires the company to cut 6,000 people in the next years. Duolingo announced that the company will “gradually stop using contractors to do work that AI can handle.”

However, a January report from a market research firm notes that while companies can use AI to replace people working in call centers and technical writing, apps don't currently exist that can replace most other occupations and probably won’t anytime soon. They project that only 6% of US jobs will be automated by 2030.

The report noted that tariffs were cited as the reasons for fewer than 8,000 layoffs, a fraction of the number attributed to AI. However, there's a reluctance for companies to say anything negative about the economic impacts of the Stable Genius' policies due to fear of retribution, but by saying that the layoffs are due to efficiencies created by AI, they avoid a potential confrontation. 

Companies also over-hired during the pandemic due to low interest rates and talent wars, but rather than admit errors, CEOs blame "right-sizing" on AI. 

 

The Doubletake Walk, 38th Day of Childwinter, 526 M.E. (Betelgeuse): Met the daughter and son-in-law for brunch today. Ran into Atlanta traffic both going there and coming back. Later, walked a 6.8-mile Quincy. 

Completed the NY Times Saturday crossword puzzle in 33:22. Solved today's Wordle in six attempts (phew!). Reached the Genius level on the Spelling Bee with 34 words worth 166 points.

I'm going to relax this evening by watching the last couple episodes of Fallout, Season 2, and playing The Outer Worlds 2.    

I'm in a Faulkner phase right now in my reading, so I'll get in a couple of chapters of As I Lay Dying before bed.

How was your day?

 

Quickglint Sidelong Blur, 37th Day of Hagwinter, 526 M.E. (Aldebaran): Did you see that racist video the Stable Genius posted to his vanity social media? You know the one - I'm not going to share it here or even describe it in detail, other than to say it's a derogatory AI image of Barack and Michelle Obama.  

The video was among more than 60 posts and reposts the Stable Genius uploaded during a flurry of activity between 10:36 p.m. and 12:25 a.m. last night. Initially, his staff and loyalists said it was just a joke, "characters from The Lion King," and that people were over-reacting. Then, they had to admit that it really was some racist bullshit and took it down, and claimed the Stable Genius didn't post it, some unidentified staffer had.

I don't believe that alibi for a second, and encourage you to ask yourself honestly - which is more likely, that the Stable Genius posted a racist video among for flurry of tweets and mind farts late at night, or that a staffer thought he was helping the cause by posting it under the S.G.'s name?

I've worked for some very conservative, very Republican companies in my life, but anywhere I've worked, if someone had posted that from a company computer or on company time or in any way affiliated with the company, they'd have been fired. Immediately, no questions asked.

This will all be forgotten in a week as we move on to the next outrage, and there will be the next outrage, and then another and another, just as there has been for the past twelve months. How much more of this are you willing to take, America? Tided of "winning" yet? 

The Stable Genius is a hateful, demented, racist old fool, and it's time he was removed from the Executive Branch as expeditiously as possible for the good of this country and the American people.

 

Second Ocean,  36th Day of Childwinter, 526 M.E. (Helios): We're halfway through Childwinter! Six six-day weeks down, six (and a day) to go. We're three dozen days into the season and the year, and by the logic of the New Revised Universal Solar Calendar, today is not Third Dozen but Second Ocean. 

Weird day. I awoke this morning from anxiety dreams that my car wouldn't start, even though I started it the Monday after the deep freeze of the previous weekend and then ran it for 30 minutes to recharge the battery, and then started and drove it again this week to pick up groceries and pharmaceutical for Eliot, my cancer cat. 

Premonitions being what they are, however, my car didn't start today. The battery just totally died - didn't even try to pretend to turn over. I had to call a jump-start company ($75) who got me started although not without difficulty and I drove my car on the charge from their jump straight to the Lexus dealer who sold me my battery and they replaced it for free (people scoff at me for driving a Lexus, thinking I'm obsessed with appearance and social status, but service like that and the fact that my car is still running after 16 years is the real reason).  However, the whole ordeal, from first trying to start my car to getting back home with the new battery, took over four hours. 

Which left barely enough time to shit, shower, and shave, scarf down a quick dinner, feed Eliot the cancer cat, and drive down to East Atlanta Village to see a show at The Earl. It was my first time back to The Earl in six years - the last show I saw there (the singer Mattiel) was in early February 2020 right as the covids were crashing down on us. 

The band Rich Ruth opened promptly at 8:00 pm and then the headliners, Taper's Choice, took the stage just a mere few minutes past 9:00. They played a nearly 1¾-hour set, but I still managed to make it home only a little past 11:00 pm.

Weird Day. Ocean days are simply the oddest.

The Laden Bough, 35th Day of Childwinter, 526 M.E. (Electra): “When it is cold, let the cold kill you,” Tozan advised. Tozan (807–869), also known as Dongshan Liangjie, not only felt that the cold needn't be avoided, but advised something useful, something practical, to do with the cold - use it and practice with it to kill the ego-self that clung to its preferences.   

"When cold and hot come," Zen Master Dogen (1200-1253 AD) advised, "let go." He cryptically added, "Eyebrows totally fallen out, your empty name is killed."  Eyebrows falling out usually implies lying, the ever-helpful Shohaku Okumura explains, sort of like modern western culture associates lying with one's nose growing longer. But Dogen may have been saying that the eyebrows fell out because of our delusions about the cold, but once the eyebrows are gone, we have nothing left to lose and have to face the truth of our real self. 

The second of the Buddha's four noble truths states that our suffering is caused by our attachments and desires. It stands then that if we cling to a desire to change things that are outside of our control, we will suffer. Cold weather is an external event outside of our direct control, but our perception of the cold is not. The Stoic philosopher Epictetus (50 – 135 AD) advises us to accept the weather as it is rather than wish it were different. The Buddha would not have disagreed. 

Tozan was the cold as an opportunity to let go of the ego-self. Epictetus saw it as an opportunity to training for future challenges. "Neither a bull nor a noble-spirited man comes to be what he is all at once," he wrote in The Discourses (Book 1, Chapter 2.32). "He must undergo a hard winter training and prepare himself and not propel himself rashly into what is not appropriate for him." 

Epictetus' teacher Musonius Rufus (25 – 100 AD) said, "It is not good to be entirely without experience of cold and heat, but one ought in some degree to feel the cold in winter and likewise the heat in summer and to seek shade as little as possible."

The Buddha, the Stoic philosophers, and the Zen masters all seem to agree that patience and acceptance are keys to enduring the cold, and that denial of the changing seasons is not only unhelpful but makes things worse. Dogen once cited a Chinese proverb:  

In the jade palace, the kingfisher builds his nest

But the gold palace offers no shelter for the mandarin duck.

The kingfisher represents focus, patience, and at the right moment, swift and decisive action. It suggests a calm, mindful, and accepting state. Mandarin ducks, seen floating on the water in gardens and moats, following the currents and tides wherever they may lead, are associated with the transient nature of life. The jade and gold palaces, obviously, are happiness, success, nirvana. Contentment, the proverb is saying, comes to the patient and focused, and those caught up in the samsara of day-to-day existence will not find peace. 

To face the cold, as well as the other challenges of life, we should adopt a calm and accepting mind, embrace them as opportunities to strengthen our resolve and practice, and avoid trying to change or wish away those things which are beyond our control. I'll try to keep that in mind when the next cold front comes through here next week.

We'll let Dogen have the last word:

In spring hundreds of flowers, in autumn the clear moon,
In summer a cool breeze, and in winter the white snow,
If your mind is free of vanity, then every season is fine.

 

Plains of Paradise, 34th Day of Childwinter, 526 M.E. (Deneb): The cold is gone and today I walked an 8.4-mile Van Buren even though I missed my previous walk due to last weekend's single-digit wind-chill temperatures. Today's high temperature was about 55°, which felt quite comfortable after the previous days of teens and twenties. In the here and now of the present moment, there is no cold, and this goony bird forgot about building nests and frolicked in the warmth. 

There was a time of cold and a time of suffering and then there was a time of no cold and no suffering. There will be a time of heat and a time of suffering, and there will be a time of no heat and no suffering. Tozan suggests we meet the cold and shivering  as well as the heat and sweating with acceptance of those transient moments and leave the suffering behind. Epictetus just entered the conversation and agrees with Tozan.

Meanwhile, it's still sinking in that after the raid on Fulton County and seizure of the 2020 election ballots, Kash Patel and Tulsi Gabbard have my name, my date of birth, my social security number, and know for whom and how I voted. What they're going to do with that information is up to them and the Stable Genius, but I suspect I'll experience their retribution one way or the other, either directly or indirectly.