Trump revokes EPA finding on greenhouse gas threat in huge blow to climate change regulations

The Trump administration on Thursday revoked a landmark scientific finding that serves as the legal foundation for federal regulations to limit greenhouse gas emissions, in a devastating blow to efforts to combat climate change.

The Environmental Protection Agency’s endangerment finding, established under President Barack Obama in 2009, classified carbon dioxide, methane and four other greenhouse gases as a threat to public health and welfare.

It underpins Clean Air Act emissions standards and rules for cars and light trucks, power plants, and oil and gas industry facilities.

“Under the process just completed by the EPA, we are officially terminating the so-called endangerment finding,” President Donald Trump said at the White House with EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin.

Zeldin said all greenhouse gas emissions standards on light, medium and heavy duty vehicles that followed the endangerment finding have been eliminated. “No longer will automakers be pressured to shift their fleets towards electric vehicles,” he said.

The endangerment finding emerged from a Supreme Court decision in 2007 that greenhouse gases are air pollutants under the Clean Air Act and the EPA must determine whether they pose a threat to public health.

Zeldin’s decision to revoke the finding is the most significant action taken yet in the Trump administration’s campaign to dismantle U.S. regulations that address climate change. He described the repeal as the largest de-regulatory action in American history.

The Sierra Club, the largest environmental group in the U.S., said Trump has formalized “climate denialism as official government policy.”

It warned that eliminating greenhouse gas standards not only imperils the public, but will expose industries to a flood of litigation. The Supreme Court ruled in a unanimous decision in 2011 that companies cannot be sued under federal common law over greenhouse emissions because regulation of these emissions had been delegated to the EPA.

Trump has sought to unleash fossil fuel production in the U.S. and kill Biden administration efforts to transition to renewable energy and electric vehicles. He withdrew the U.S. from the Paris Climate Agreement and has repealed key tax subsidies for solar, wind and EVs.