The Trump administration has revoked the bedrock scientific determination which gives the government the ability to regulate climate-heating pollution. The move was described as a gift to “billionaire polluters” at the expense of Americans’ health.
The endangerment finding, which states that the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere endangers public health and welfare, has since 2009 allowed the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to limit heat-trapping pollution from vehicles, power plants and other industrial sources.
Trump called the move “the single largest deregulatory action in American history”.
“This is a big one if you’re into environment,” he told reporters on Thursday. “This is about as big as it gets.”
The move comes as part of Trump’s bigger anti-environment push, which has seen him roll back pollution rules and boost oil and gas.
“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,” said Gina McCarthy, former EPA administrator, who now chairs America Is All In, a coalition of climate-concerned states and cities in the US.
The final rule removes the government’s ability to impose requirements to track, report, and limit climate-heating pollution from cars and trucks. Transportation is the largest source of climate pollution in the US.
It does not apply to regulations on stationary sources of emissions such as power plants and fossil fuel infrastructure, which are regulated under a separate section of the Clean Air Act, but it will open the door to end those standards, too.
Trump’s EPA has separately proposed to find that emissions from power plants “do not contribute significantly to dangerous air pollution” and therefore should not be regulated. Joseph Goffman, who served as EPA air chief under Joe Biden, expects the agency will apply their vehicles-focused arguments to stationary polluters in order to kill the endangerment finding for all sources of greenhouse gas emissions.
“Instead of the entire house of cards of all EPA climate regulation collapsing all at once today, it’s going to be like a row of dominoes falling,” said Goffman, who helped write and implement the Clean Air Act and worked directly on the endangerment finding.
Environmental advocates have condemned the move as illegal. A slew of green groups have promised to take EPA to court over the rollback.
The move marks “the most aggressive, ruthless act of dismantling public health protections in the agency’s 55-year history”, said Dominique Browning, director and co-founder of environmental advocacy group Moms Clean Air Force.
In a press release, EPA said the move will save the US $1.3tn, while Trump said Thursday that the move “will save American consumers trillions of dollars”.
Zeldin said the Obama and Biden administrations used the endangerment finding “to steamroll into existence a leftwing wish list of costly climate policies”.
“Who paid the biggest price? Hard working families, small businesses, millions of Americans who just want a reliable, affordable car to get to work or take their kids to school or go to church on Sunday,” he said.
But though the rollback could save some corporations money, experts note it could take a massive toll on ordinary Americans’ wellbeing and pocketbooks.
One analysis from green group Environmental Defense Fund found the full repeal of the endangerment finding combined with Trump’s proposal to rollback motor vehicle standards would result in as much as 18bn more tons of planet-warming pollution by 2055 – the same as the annual emissions of China, the world’s top polluter – and would impose up to $4.7tn in additional expenses tied to harmful climate and air pollution by that time.
The EPA administrator, Lee Zeldin, submitted the repeal of the legal determination for White House review last month. In July, he officially announced plans to repeal the finding, justifying the proposal with a widely-criticized energy department report questioning climate science.
The agency received half a million comments on the proposal. Last month, a federal judge said the July energy department report was created unlawfully.
The rollback comes one month after the Trump administration announced it will pull the US from the foundational UN agreement to address the climate crisis, as well as the world’s leading body of climate scientists. Over the past year, Zeldin has also launched an all-out assault on climate, air, water and chemical protections. EPA has also removed crucial climate-focused science and data from its webpages.
“This is all part of the Trump administration’s authoritarian playbook to replace facts with propaganda, to enrich a few while harming the rest of us,” said Rachel Cleetus, senior policy director for the climate and energy program at the science advocacy group Union of Concerned Scientists. “Administrator Zeldin has fully abdicated EPA’s responsibility to protect our health and the environment.”
The EPA has said that it determined the US would save billions annually by revoking the endangerment determination. But the agency’s analysis did not account for the money and lives saved by the environmental and public-health protections that the change would eliminate, experts say.
“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,” California Governor Gavin Newsom and Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers, who co-chair a bipartisan coalition of governors called the US Climate Alliance, said in a joint statement.
Alex Witt, senior advisor at green advocacy group Climate Power, said: “Zeldin and Trump are telling our families: we’ll let you get sicker and watch your healthcare costs skyrocket as long as oil and gas CEOs can profit.”
“This decision makes it abundantly clear that Trump is willing to make our families sicker and less safe, all to benefit a few billionaire polluters,” said Witt.
Some industry groups have been reluctant to support the full rollback of the endangerment finding. The American Petroleum Institute, the top US oil lobby group, last month said it backed a repeal of the endangerment finding for vehicles, but not for stationary sources of pollution like power plants.
