In an article centered on a so-called balancing act by Big Oil in an environment in which the Trump Administration is rolling back a broad swath of climate regulations, the news writers had this:

The industry’s biggest trade groups have said they support effective and reasonable regulations. Nixing the programs, the lobbyists said, would create an impossible choice for the industry—ask the administration to reinstate some rules, or walk back its previous support for some regulations.

This is timidity writ large. If the trade groups and the managers of the groups’ constituent companies really think this, that, or those rules are good ideas, then they should self-regulate along those lines. There’s nothing to stop them; there’s nothing forcing them to render themselves dependent on government diktats.

Lobbyists have signaled to the EPA that creating a regulatory vacuum could invite new lawsuits.

The proper response to those lawsuits is to stop being so desperate to settle and to stop hiding behind Government apron strings. With the climate regulation roll back, there are fewer grounds on which to base a lawsuit, and the proper response to those remaining that are brought is to refuse to settle, push the pace on the trials, and burn the suers to the ground in open court. That’ll be expensive in the early stages, especially as they’re forced by activist district judges to go through the appeals process, but it will reduce long-term legal costs far more by obviating a large number of lawsuits in the aftermath of those early ones.

It’s past time for business managers, especially including those running energy producing businesses, to recall the nature of their management roles.

The central imperative of a management position in the United States is to manage a company in a way that satisfies the company’s owners. There is nothing in that imperative that requires a manager to manage his company in a way that satisfies the demands of Government beyond simply following law. Those managers who are that timid that they need to be told what to do by Government need to be replaced; they’re unfit for their management positions.

This is America. Business managers are free to act on their own initiative; they are not required to wait on Government.