Except, all regulations are heavily edited by people who listen to lobbyists. And the energy industry spends more on lobbying than any other industry.

So sure, write some new SOx and NOx legislation. That draft goes out. Your calendar then fills up with lobbyists and industry "experts" who water it down in dozens of little ways - "You're going to kill too many jobs in Poughkeepsie, where you have a close upcoming race against someone from the other party..." - and the final regulation is mostly feel-good - like a new carbon catcher on the smokestack at the coal-fired power plant - and does almost nothing to address the core problem, which is that alternative energy sources aren't even being considered, much less built.

Put all the carbon catchers on the smokestacks you want... you now have to do something with that carbon.

To replace the power plant with solar, wind, hydro, nuclear, whatever, you have to hit the power company in their bottom line and make their coal-fired plant unsustainable, so the only fiscally responsible solution is to go with another form of power generation. (This is why carbon taxes always fail, or are so weakened they have little to no effect on the power company's bottom line.)

Regulation absolutely has its place. I don't disagree with your point there.

But regulation is a band-aid after the bad decisions have already been made, and an attempt to mitigate the knock-on effects of an original bad decision, instead of making a better decision and making the legislation unnecessary.