In what President Donald Trump is calling the “single largest deregulatory action in American history,” EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said at a White House event Thursday that his agency would repeal the 2009 endangerment finding that underlies regulations on greenhouse gas emissions.
The repeal also would invalidate any regulations subsequently formed on the finding’s basis — including vehicle tailpipe emissions standards, which the administration blames for creating uncertainty for the auto industry and stifling consumer choice.
The 2009 finding was the EPA’s scientific determination that greenhouse gas emissions are air pollutants posing a public health threat — and therefore requiring the agency to regulate such emissions under its Clean Air Act authority.
“Under the process just completed by the EPA, we are officially terminating the so-called endangerment finding, a disastrous Obama-era policy that severely damaged the American auto industry and massively drove up prices for American consumers,” Trump said.
He said the finding — which was formalized in an EPA rulemaking during the Obama administration but was started during the George W. Bush administration — had no basis in fact or law.
“And yet this radical rule became the legal foundation for the Green New Scam,” Trump added, citing the finding’s role in expanding the adoption of electric vehicles and prompting the development of other technologies, such as automatic start-stop systems.
“Referred to by some as the Holy Grail of federal regulatory overreach, the 2009 Obama EPA endangerment finding is now eliminated,” said Zeldin. “This action will save Americans taxpayers over $1.3 trillion, what that means is lower prices, more choices and an end of heavy-handed climate policy.”
Zeldin also said that the move would help Americans save $2,400 off the cost of a new vehicle and would mark an end to automakers installing cars with start-stop features for stops, such as at traffic lights, to lessen emissions.
Trump said Thursday the repeal takes effect immediately. But environmental groups are expected to take the fight over the finding to the courts now that the EPA’s action has been made official.
The decision has been met with sharp criticism from stakeholders including state and local governments, environmental and public health groups, academics and former EPA staff.
“This EPA would rather spend its time in court working for the fossil fuel industry than protecting us from pollution and the escalating impacts of climate change,” former EPA administrator and White House National Climate Advisor Gina McCarthy said in an emailed statement. “For more than 15 years, EPA has had a clear scientific and legal obligation to regulate greenhouse gases, and the evidence has only grown stronger as their health and environmental hazards have become impossible to ignore.”
But among the agency’s arguments for repealing the endangerment finding was that developments in both science and the law since 2009 had negated its statutory authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.
EPA first signaled the move last July, when Zeldin announced the intent to repeal the finding in a joint event with Energy Secretary Chris Wright. During that event, Wright released a related — and since legally challenged — Energy Department report questioning the connection between greenhouse gas emissions and climate change. The report, compiled by a group of academics and known climate skeptics, was cited multiple times in the EPA rulemaking.
Despite the EPA’s citation of the report and the joint announcement, agency spokesperson Brigit Hirsch said in a January emailed statement that they were separate administrative actions.
Senate Environment and Public Works Chairman Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., said Thursday that she applauded the rescission.
“This repeal will have a transformational impact on my home state of West Virginia, as these efforts reverse the harmful Democrat attacks on affordable, gas-powered vehicles that West Virginians have endured for far too long,” Capito said. “This action represents a key win for affordability, job creation and consumer choice, and I congratulate President Trump and Administrator Zeldin for their continued success in producing visible results for the American people.”
Democrats’ criticism
But Democrats have railed against the EPA’s action since the agency announced its proposal in July, and they redoubled their protest this week after the agency previewed its final action in media interviews on Tuesday.
At a rally outside of EPA headquarters on Wednesday, Senate Environment and Public Works ranking member Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., said the repeal of the endangerment finding was done to satisfy the fossil fuel donors to Trump’s 2024 campaign.
“This is corruption, plain and simple. Old fashioned, dirty political corruption,” said Whitehouse. “The EPA has been so infiltrated by the corrupt fossil fuel industry that it has turned an agency of government into the weapon of the fossil fuel polluters against their clean energy competition, which is not just cleaner, but safer and less expensive than fossil fuel.”
Sen. Edward J. Markey, D-Mass., said the EPA is still beholden to its “mission to protect human health and the environment,” noting that the endangerment finding stemmed from a 2007 Supreme Court ruling in Massachusetts v. EPA. In that case, the court found the agency had the authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions because carbon dioxide and others fell under the Clean Air Act’s definition of air pollutants.
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