Trump Scraps Climate Endangerment Finding, Ends ‘Disastrous Obama Era Policy’

• The Trump administration says it has revoked the EPA’s 2009 endangerment finding, a key legal basis for US greenhouse gas rules.
• President Donald Trump and EPA administrator Lee Zeldin argued the move will cut costs and ease pressure on automakers.
• Democrats, governors, and environmental groups condemned the decision and signalled court fights.

The Trump administration says it has stripped away much of the federal government’s ability to regulate greenhouse gases by revoking the long-standing EPA finding that climate pollution endangers public health and welfare.

President Donald Trump announced the move Thursday alongside Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lee Zeldin, calling the finding “a disastrous Obama era policy that severely damaged the American auto industry and massively drove up prices for American consumers.”

Trump claimed the decision would “eliminate over $1.3 trillion of regulatory cost and help bring car prices tumbling down dramatically.”

“This determination had no basis in fact, had none whatsoever, and it had no basis in law. On the contrary, over the generations, fossil fuels have saved millions of lives and lifted billions of people out of poverty and all over the world,” Trump said.

“Bad things happened, and yet this radical rule became the legal foundation for the green new scam, one of the greatest scams in history … that is why, effective immediately, we are repealing the ridiculous endangerment finding and terminating all additional green emission standards imposed unnecessarily on vehicle models and engines between 2012 and 2027 and beyond.”

Zeldin said the move represented “the single largest act of deregulation in the history of the United States of America” by repealing what he described as “the holy grail of federal regulatory overreach.”

“Sixteen years ago, an ideological crusade within the Obama administration set off the most costly regulatory power grab our country has ever experienced. The 2009 Obama EPA endangerment finding led to trillions of dollars in regulations that strangled entire sectors of the United States economy, including the American auto industry,” Zeldin said.

He accused the Obama and Biden administrations of using the finding to “steamroll into existence a left-wing wish list of costly climate policies, electric vehicle mandates and other requirements that assaulted consumer choice and affordability.”

“The endangerment finding and the regulations that were based on it didn’t just regulate emissions, it regulated and targeted the American dream, and now the endangerment finding is hereby eliminated, as well as all greenhouse gas emission standards that followed. The red tape has been cut.”

Zeldin added that automakers would “no longer be burdened by measuring, compiling or reporting greenhouse gas emissions for vehicles and engines” and “no longer … be pressured to shift their fleets towards electric vehicles.”

The 2009 endangerment finding has underpinned US climate rules under the Clean Air Act across sectors, including vehicle pollution standards, methane rules, and limits covering power plants and industrial facilities. Critics of the rollback say losing that foundation would sharply restrict the EPA’s authority over carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.

Trump administration officials argued the change will quickly loosen limits on vehicle emissions, giving automakers more room to build vehicles that burn more fuel than current standards allow.

Environmental leaders and Democrats attacked the decision, with California Governor Gavin Newsom and Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers saying: “This action is unlawful, ignores basic science and denies reality. We know greenhouse gases cause climate change and endanger our communities and our health — and we will not stop fighting to protect the American people from pollution,”

New Jersey Representative Frank Pallone, the top Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, called it “the direct result of having corrupt, dishonest grifters running the White House and EPA, whose only priority is lining the pockets of their wealthy corporate polluter friends.”

Pallone said the decision will raise household costs while “unchecked climate pollution wreaks havoc on property values, insurance rates, and jobs.”

“It’s a lose-lose for middle class families and an absolute coup for Trump’s wealthy corporate buddies who are being allowed to run roughshod over our country,” he said.

The Environmental Defense Fund said it plans to fight the move in court. EDF President Fred Krupp said: “This action will only lead to more of this pollution, and that will lead to higher costs and real harms for American families,” and added: “The evidence – and the lived experiences of so many Americans – tell us that our health will suffer.”

Author and Third Act founder Bill McKibben previously told The Independent: “If you’re busily committing a crime, it’s smart to try and change the law so that it’s not technically a crime any more,” and added: “Big Oil is not content to merely wreck the future, they’d like to alter the past as well.”

Dr. Daniel Swain, a California Institute for Water Resources climate scientist, told The Independent last year legal challenges could slow implementation while courts review the process.

“If this ultimately comes to pass, the consequences will be stark: it essentially would halt all federal actions to regulate heat-trapping and climate change-causing greenhouse gases as a pollutant. That would mark a grim milestone, indeed,” Swain said.

The announcement is part of a wider push under Zeldin to scale back federal climate capacity. He has previously said the agency would shutter its Office of Research and Development, the EPA unit that provides scientific work supporting environmental rules and analysis of climate and pollution risks.

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