The Trump administration has revoked a scientific finding that long has been the central basis for US action to regulate greenhouse gas emissions and fight climate change, the most aggressive move by the president to roll back climate regulations.
The rule finalised by the US Environmental Protection Agency rescinds a 2009 government declaration known as the endangerment finding that determined that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare.
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 endangerment finding by the Obama administration is the legal underpinning of nearly all climate regulations under the Clean Air Act for motor vehicles, power plants and other pollution sources that are heating the planet.
Overturning the finding will “raise more havoc" than other actions by the Trump administration to roll back environmental rules, said Ann Carlson, an environmental law professor at the UCLA School of Law.
Legal challenges are certain for an action that repeals all greenhouse gas emissions standards for cars and trucks, and could unleash a broader undoing of climate regulations on stationary sources such as power plants and oil and gas facilities, experts say.
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, who has pivoted the agency toward a business-friendly approach that has repeatedly reversed climate regulations, said repeal of the endangerment finding “will be the largest deregulatory action in the history of America.”
Environmental groups described the move as the single biggest attack in US history against federal authority to address climate change.
Zeldin announced the rule completion on Thursday alongside President Donald Trump. The EPA also said it will propose a two-year delay to a Biden-era rule restricting greenhouse gas emissions by cars and light trucks.
Zeldin, a former Republican congressman who was tapped by Trump to lead EPA last year, has criticised his predecessors in Democratic administrations, saying that in the name of tackling climate change, they were "willing to bankrupt the country.”
Withdrawing the endangerment finding “is the most important step taken by the Trump administration so far to return to energy and economic sanity,'' said Myron Ebell, a conservative activist who has questioned the science behind climate change.
US Supreme Court has upheld endangerment finding 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.
The endangerment finding is widely considered the legal foundation that underpins a series of regulations intended to protect against threats made increasingly severe by climate change. That includes deadly floods, extreme heat waves, catastrophic wildfires and other natural disasters in the United States and around the world.
David Doniger, a climate expert at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said Trump and Zeldin are trying to use repeal of the finding as a “kill shot’’ that would allow the administration to make nearly all climate regulations invalid.
The repeal could erase current limits on greenhouse gas pollution from cars, factories, power plants and other sources and could prevent future administrations from proposing rules to address global warming.
The EPA action follows an executive order from Trump that directed the agency 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.
The Trump administration announced a proposal in December to weaken vehicle mileage rules for the auto industry, loosening regulatory pressure on automakers to control pollution from gasoline-powered cars and trucks.
The mileage plan would significantly reduce requirements that set rules on how far new vehicles need to travel on a gallon of gasoline. Trump said the rule change will lower the price of new cars and increase Americans’ access to the full range of gasoline vehicles they need and can afford.
Environmental groups said the plan would keep polluting, gas-burning cars and trucks on US roads for years to come, threatening the health of millions of Americans, particularly children and the elderly.
