One for the excellent-move side of the ledger

Human freedom and advancement live to see another day in post-America:

The Trump administration this week is expected to formally repeal the Clean Power Plan, taking direct aim at former President Barack Obama’s climate change legacy and delivering a major win for the coal industry.

A draft proposal of the Environmental Protection Agency’s looming decision, leaked late last week and posted online, says the plan — which would have limited carbon emissions from power plants and, in the process, drastically reduced the amount of coal-generated electricity in the U.S. — goes beyond the bounds of federal law and unnecessarily hikes energy prices for consumers.

EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, as Oklahoma’s attorney general, sued the federal government over the policy. He and others who took legal action contend the agency doesn’t have authority under the federal Clean Air Act to enact such sweeping changes to how power plants are run.

“The EPA proposes to determine that the CPP is not within Congress’s grant of authority to the agency under the governing statute. It is not in the interests of the EPA, or in accord with its mission of environmental protection consistent with the rule of law, to expend its resources along the path of implementing a rule, receiving and passing judgment on state plans, or promulgating federal plans in furtherance of a policy that is not within the bounds of our statutory authority,” the agencysays.

The document concludes months of review of the policy, which was to become effective shortly after Mr. Pruitt took charge in February.

“The EPA is proposing to repeal the CPP in its entirety,” the agency says in its draft conclusion, the final version of which is expected to be released any day.

Power companies had already incurred some costs in anticipation of the CPP going into effect should another Freedom-Hater succeed the Most Equal Comrade, but at least now the damage is contained.

And executive overreach is reversed, at least on one front.

And the principle that free citizens can choose to consume whatever energy forms they damn well please is upheld.