The Environmental Protection Agency has decided to revoke a key scientific finding it published 16 years ago that six greenhouse gases are a threat to public health and must be regulated under the Clean Air Act.
Known as the “endangerment finding,” it is the 2009 scientific basis for which the EPA has regulated greenhouse gas emissions from new motor vehicles, as well as other sources of climate pollution, but Administrator Lee Zeldin announced on a conservative podcast Tuesday that the agency is revoking the finding, calling it, “the largest deregulatory action in the history of America.”
Since it was signed by then-Administrator Lisa Jackson in 2009, the finding has been used by the EPA to regulate sources of climate change-causing pollution from cars, power plants and other sources of transportation like planes, as well as oil and gas operations.
During his appearance on the “Ruthless Podcast,” Zeldin criticized the endangerment finding, saying it put too many regulatory restrictions on transportation and stationary sources of greenhouse gas pollution.
“There are people, who in the name of climate change, are willing to bankrupt the country,” he said.
Zeldin also said regulating climate pollution costs Americans too much money and by revoking the finding and subsequent regulations, “it’s projected to save Americans over a trillion dollars.”
But the EPA’s own regulatory impact report says limiting emissions for cars and trucks is expected to generate more than $2.1 trillion in net benefits over the next 30 years, including $820 billion in fuel savings and $1.8 trillion in public health and climate benefits.
Repealing the finding comes at a time when climate change impacts appear to be reaching new heights as 2024 was the hottest year on record, and natural disasters are growing more intense, destructive and deadly. Since 2010, there have been 246 billion-dollar disasters striking every U.S. state, causing more than $1.7 trillion in damages, and killing more than 7,700 people, according to archived data from NOAA.
“For the EPA to repeal the 2009 finding borders on criminal negligence,” said Robert Howarth, a professor of ecology and environmental biology at Cornell University, in a statement. “The science was clear in 2009 and has become much stronger and clearer since: climate disruption is a large and growing problem; it is caused primarily from our use of fossil fuels and the resultant emissions of carbon dioxide and methane; and it is a deadly problem.”
Legality of the endangerment finding
In 2007, the Supreme Court ruled in Massachusetts v. EPA that greenhouse gases are a form of air pollution that can be regulated under the Clean Air Act, but it tasked the EPA with making a scientific finding about whether the gases harm public health.
Two years later, the EPA published the endangerment finding, relying on extensive scientific evidence and public input to definitively state that greenhouse gases, which cause climate change, threaten health and the welfare of current and future generations.
The finding has previously been challenged in court, most recently in 2023, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. circuit upheld the finding and the Supreme Court refused to hear the case.
“The administration’s move to jettison these standards flies in the face of the Supreme Court’s landmark decision directing the EPA to follow the science,” said Christy Goldfuss, executive director of the Natural Resources Defense Council, in a statement. “If EPA finalizes this illegal and cynical approach, we will see them in court.”
Impacts of the endangerment finding
Since it was signed in 2009, the most crucial impacts of regulating greenhouse gasses have been to the U.S. transportation sector, which if it were its own country, would be the fourth largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the world, according to the European Commission and data from the EPA.
New passenger vehicles today emit 24% less climate pollution than they did in 2011, the year before the first tailpipe regulations went into effect, according to the EPA’s own estimates. The EPA tightened the tailpipe emissions standards for cars and trucks in 2024, which was expected to cut 7.2 billion tons of climate pollution by 2055 and save $13 billion in annual health benefits.
The EPA’s own economic analysis of the emissions standards found it would save consumers an average of $6,000 over the life of a new vehicle, once the model year 2027 standards were in place.
In addition to removing regulations on cars, the EPA has already jettisoned similar rules to limit emissions for power plants, has encouraged the development of fossil fuel-based energy and has promised to rollback dozens of additional environmental regulations that hamper the development of American energy and manufacturing.
“Trump’s EPA is trying every trick in the book to deny and avoid their mission to protect people and the environment from the ravages of unchecked climate pollution. Instead of doing their job, this EPA is putting the safety of our loved ones at risk while ratcheting up grid instability, energy bills, and disaster costs,” said former EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy, in a statement.
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