“The EPA’s mission is to ‘protect and enhance the quality of the Nation’s air resources,’ but...”

That’s the most telling half a sentence in the Environmental Protection Agency’s plan to repeal President Barack Obama’s signature climate change regulation, the Clean Power Plan. Expected to be announced officially on Tuesday, the plan will allow coal-fired power plants to emit unlimited amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere—and along with those greenhouse gases, harmful air pollutants like particulate matter, ozone, and sulfur dioxide. So after the ominous “but” that disrupts the EPA’s boilerplate explanation of its mission, the document lowers the boom: “the Agency must do so within the authority delegated to it by Congress.” And Congress apparently never gave the EPA the authority to put climate regulations on the dirtiest source of electricity in the country.

It’s been known for some time that EPA administrator Scott Pruitt has never intended to follow his agency’s core mission. Pruitt’s own agenda, as his meeting records and own statements have shown, is to serve the polluting interests that have bolstered his political career for so long. But it’s far from clear how he’s going to manage this particular industry favor. Repealing the Clean Power Plan means providing a legal argument that will hold up when environmentalists inevitably challenge Pruitt’s plan in court. White House lawyers will counter that the Obama administration acted beyond the scope of the Clean Air Act when it created this regulation—while also arguing that the regulation is too financially burdensome on the coal industry, while providing little benefits to the climate or public health.

The latter case will be an especially tough sell in court. If the draft proposal released on Monday is any indication, the agency is setting itself up to fudge those numbers. EPA officials will exaggerate the costs that Clean Power Plan enforcement will impose on coal operators, and dramatically underestimate the benefits—which means that they’ll ignore both mainstream science on air pollution’s health impacts and the global economic costs of climate change. And even when it embarks on this cherry-picking expedition, the EPA still winds up showing that the benefits of cutting carbon outweigh the costs. Experts versed in the issue contend that only an accounting scenario based in scientific malpractice can show otherwise.

Make no mistake: The Clean Power Plan was always going to be costly to coal. That was kind of the point—and the Obama administration admitted as much. But Obama EPA administrators also argued that the health and climate benefits would more than make up for the industry’s losses. Here’s the gist of their math: Cutting U.S. carbon dioxide emissions 32 percent from 2005 levels by the year 2030 would cost the coal industry $8.4 billion a year—but it would also save an annual $34 billion to $54 billion per year. That was the range they fixed for costs that the United Sates would avoid in mitigating both climate change and health impacts arising from air pollution. Nor were the relevant gains only financial: Each year, the Obama administration said, the Clean Power Plan would prevent 3,600 premature deaths, 1,700 heart attacks, 90,000 asthma attacks, and 300,000 missed work and school days.