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WASHINGTON (AP) — On Thursday, the Trump administration plans to revoke a key scientific determination that has long been the foundation for U.S. efforts to regulate greenhouse gas emissions and combat climate change, as revealed by the White House.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is set to finalize a rule that will overturn a 2009 governmental decision known as the endangerment finding. This policy, introduced during the Obama administration, declared that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases pose a threat to public health and welfare.
According to White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, President Donald Trump and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin will officially rescind the 2009 endangerment finding in a ceremony at the White House.
Leavitt described the move as “the largest deregulatory action in American history,” stating it would save the American public $1.3 trillion by eliminating burdensome regulations. A significant portion of these savings is expected from lowered costs for new vehicles, with the EPA estimating a reduction of over $2,400 per vehicle for popular light-duty cars, SUVs, and trucks.
The endangerment finding serves as the legal foundation for nearly all climate regulations under the Clean Air Act, targeting emissions from motor vehicles, power plants, and other pollution sources contributing to global warming. These regulations aim to mitigate the escalating threats posed by climate change, such as deadly floods, extreme heat, catastrophic wildfires, and other natural disasters both in the United States and globally.
Legal challenges would be certain for any action that effectively would repeal those regulations, with environmental groups describing the shift as the single biggest attack in U.S. history on federal efforts to address climate change.
EPA press secretary Brigit Hirsch said the Obama-era rule was “one of the most damaging decisions in modern history” and said EPA “is actively working to deliver a historic action for the American people.”
Trump, who has called climate change a “hoax,” previously issued an executive order that directed EPA to submit a report on “the legality and continuing applicability” of the endangerment finding. Conservatives and some congressional Republicans have long sought to undo what they consider overly restrictive and economically damaging rules to limit greenhouse gases that cause global warming.
Zeldin, a former Republican congressman who was tapped by Trump to lead EPA last year, has criticized his predecessors in Democratic administrations, saying they were “willing to bankrupt the country” in an effort to combat climate change.
Democrats “created this endangerment finding and then they are able to put all these regulations on vehicles, on airplanes, on stationary sources, to basically regulate out of existence … segments of our economy,″ Zeldin said in announcing the proposed rule last July. ”And it cost Americans a lot of money.”
Peter Zalzal, a lawyer and associate vice president of the Environmental Defense Fund, countered that the EPA will be encouraging more climate pollution, higher health insurance and fuel costs and thousands of avoidable premature deaths.
Zeldin’s push “is cynical and deeply damaging, given the mountain of scientific evidence supporting the finding, the devastating climate harms Americans are experiencing right now and EPA’s clear obligation to protect Americans’ health and welfare,” he said.
Zalzal and other critics noted that the Supreme Court ruled in a 2007 case that planet-warming greenhouse gases, caused by burning of oil and other fossil fuels, are air pollutants under the Clean Air Act.
Since the high court’s decision, in a case known as Massachusetts v. EPA, courts have uniformly rejected legal challenges to the endangerment finding, including a 2023 decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
Following Zeldin’s proposal to repeal the rule, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine reassessed the science underpinning the 2009 finding and concluded it was “accurate, has stood the test of time, and is now reinforced by even stronger evidence.”
Much of the understanding of climate change that was uncertain or tentative in 2009 is now resolved, the NAS panel of scientists said in a September report. “The evidence for current and future harm to human health and welfare created by human-caused greenhouse gases is beyond scientific dispute,” the panel said.
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