My real motive: To detract from workplace efficiency by draining wokers' utility as they spiral deeper, ever deeper, into blog arguments.

If you can show that but for the added cost of an upgrade, a polluter would have modernized, then yes, that law is perversely written. But is the company more or less dirty before the upgrade, i.e. is the upgrade designed so that more pollutants can be shed from boiler more quickly? Okay, now I'm reducing this to the micro-, micro- level, and may be impossible to debate. Clinton's final days were full of questionable activity (Ed: as opposed to the first 7.5 years??) to be sure, but the solution to poorly written or unrealistic regulations is not to throw the baby out with the bathwater for the sake of "efficiency". Please, re-write the things, by all means. But don't simply erase them and claim the problem solved. And to be clear, the new regulations provide an alarming back door: Up to 20% of the value of the physical plant can be spent on upgrades without improving pollution controls. This to me sounds like a bone thrown.

Last, all the revised EPA regulations do is invite the states to come around with process servers.