The US Environmental Protection Agency will rescind the long-standing finding that greenhouse gas emissions endanger human health, as well as tailpipe emission standards for vehicles, removing the legal foundation of greenhouse gas regulations across industries, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced yesterday.
Republican President Donald Trump’s pick Zeldin announced the agency’s plan to rescind the ‘endangerment finding’ at an event at a truck factory in Indiana, alongside Energy Secretary Chris Wright, and called it the largest deregulatory action in US history.
Zeldin said that a 2024 Supreme Court decision that cut back the power of federal agencies to interpret the laws they administer, known as the Chevron deference, means that the EPA does not have the ability to regulate global greenhouse gas emissions.
“We do not have that power on our own to decide as an agency that we are going to combat global climate change because we give ourselves that power,” Zeldin said.
He added that if Congress decides it wants to amend the federal Clean Air Act to explicitly state the US should regulate carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gas emissions, the EPA would follow its lead.
Earlier, Zeldin told the Ruthless podcast that repealing the endangerment finding will save Americans money and unravel two decades of regulation aimed at reducing carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases from cars, power plants, oil production and other sources.
In 2009, the EPA under former Democratic President Barack Obama issued a finding that emissions from new motor vehicles contribute to pollution and endanger public health and welfare. It was upheld in several legal challenges and underpinned subsequent greenhouse gas regulations.
“With regard to the endangerment finding, they’ll say carbon dioxide is a pollutant and that’s the end of it. They’ll never acknowledge any type of benefit or need for carbon dioxide,” Zeldin told the podcast. “It’s important to note, and they don’t, how important it is for the planet.”
Reuters reported last week that the EPA plans to repeal all greenhouse gas emission standards for light-duty, medium-duty, and heavy-duty vehicles and engines in the coming days after it removes the scientific finding that justified those rules, according to a summary.
The move is expected to trigger legal challenges, according to several environmental groups and lawyers.
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