Also in those years, the air in our major cities was awful, and there were reports of polluted rivers actually catching fire. Ohio's Cuyahoga River actually caught fire several times between 1868 and 1969. These were real problems. Our air and water were literally making people sick.

It was during this time (1970) that the Nixon administration founded the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA.) That agency's purpose:

The mission of EPA is to protect human health and the environment.

EPA works to ensure that: Americans have clean air, land and water;

• National efforts to reduce environmental risks are based on the best available scientific information;
• Federal laws protecting human health and the environment are administered and enforced fairly, effectively and as Congress intended;
• Environmental stewardship is integral to U.S. policies concerning natural resources, human health, economic growth, energy, transportation, agriculture, industry, and international trade, and these factors are similarly considered in establishing environmental policy;
• All parts of society--communities, individuals, businesses, and state, local and tribal governments--have access to accurate information sufficient to effectively participate in managing human health and environmental risks;
• Contaminated lands and toxic sites are cleaned up by potentially responsible parties and revitalized; and 
• Chemicals in the marketplace are reviewed for safety.

Here's the thing: The initial purpose of the EPA has been met. Our skies, waterways, and forests are cleaner than they have been since the onset of the Industrial Revolution. Rivers aren't catching fire. People are, by and large, not chucking garbage out their car windows or leaving drifts of empty beer cans behind at campsites. Among most Americans, there has been a cultural change and a stigma on littering, while our technological innovations in energy production and manufacturing have cleaned up the air and waterways. The continental United States is cleaner than it has been in decades.

In other words, the purpose for which the EPA was founded has been achieved. But there is nothing so close to immortal as a government agency.

But there's a bigger problem; the EPA, while well into the land of diminishing returns on its original purpose, has started "climate arrests."

The Biden Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released a report this week about the prosecution of a California man for “smuggling greenhouse gases” across the border from Mexico and selling them online.

The agency posted that it was its first “climate change arrest.”

Michael Hart, 58, was arrested in March and pleaded guilty in September to charges related to transporting refrigerants into the US to peddle on Facebook Marketplace, OfferUp and other online vendors between June and December 2022.

Biden’s EPA touted the crackdown on Hart, the first-ever person charged for climate change-related bootlegging of refrigerants — namely, hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HFCs) — without the agency’s approval, in its report.

When charging the San Diego resident earlier this year, US Attorney Tara McGrath vowed “it will not be the last” case of its kind.

“We are using every means possible to protect our planet from the harm caused by toxic pollutants, including bringing criminal charges,” the prosecutor from the Southern District of California said.

Granted, Mr. Hart appears to have engaged in smuggling; regardless of the product, it's not legal to smuggle goods across the border without declaring them and paying the appropriate duties, if required. But it's the EPA's categorizing this as a "climate crime" that's troubling, along with an activist US Attorney claiming it "will not be the last" such case.

That's profoundly unsettling. What's next? Going after people with outdoor grills and wood stoves? (I would recommend against them trying to tamper with rural Alaskans' wood stoves; rural Alaskans are a stubborn lot.) 

The EPA has not only fulfilled its initial purpose; it has overstepped beyond the bounds of reason.

See Related: Biden, on His Way Out the Door, Slams Energy Sector With Methane Tax

Can DOGE Slim Down Our Fat, Bloated Blob of a Government, or Is More Action Needed?

 And, of course, there is the same Constitutional issue that applies to all of the departments we have examined in this series. There is no enumerated authority of Congress nor the Executive to do any of what the EPA claims as core purposes; in light of the 10th Amendment, the EPA should not exist.

Vivek and Elon will have their hands full with the DOGE. There are tons of fat to carve out of the federal government, and we can count on two years of a GOP-controlled House and Senate to pass statutory fixes for any of the problems they identify and recommend be addressed.

The EPA, though, is as good an example as any of something that can largely be done away with. Their proposed 2025 budget includes a whopping  $10.994 billion in American taxpayer dollars for an agency whose initial purpose has been largely achieved and who now is out of control.

Transfer what few purposes legitimately remain, like governing interstate navigable waterways and negotiating water disputes, to the Department of the Interior. Then defund, disband, lock the doors, and sell the building, the proceeds of which sale should be applied to the national debt. The EPA can go; Vivek, Elon, take a look and then let the DOGE off the leash and sic it on the EPA.