President Donald Trump announced Thursday that the Environmental Protection Agency is rescinding the legal finding that it has relied on for nearly two decades to limit the heat-trapping pollution that spews from vehicle tailpipes, oil refineries and factories.
The repeal of that landmark determination, known as the endangerment finding, will upend most U.S. policies aimed at curbing climate change.
The finding — which the EPA issued in 2009 — said that the global warming caused by greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane endangers the health and welfare of current and future generations.
“We are officially terminating the so called endangerment finding, a disastrous Obama era policy,” Trump said in a news conference Thursday. “This determination had no basis in fact — 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 all over the world.”
Major environmental groups have disputed the administration's stance on the endangerment finding and have been preparing to sue in response to its repeal.
The endangerment finding underpinned the EPA’s ability to regulate greenhouse gas pollution from vehicles and power plants and to mandate that companies report their emissions. It required the federal government to take action on climate under the Clean Air Act.
The Supreme Court in 2007 ruled that the EPA had the authority to regulate heat-trapping greenhouse gases and acknowledged that harms associated with climate change are “serious and well recognized,” which led to the creation of the endangerment finding two years later.
The White House and the EPA have called the finding's repeal “the largest deregulatory action in American history.”
It's the Trump administration’s most significant attempt yet to diminish efforts to address climate change. The U.S. officially left the 2015 Paris Agreement for the second time last month and is also expected to withdraw from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, leaving America without a meaningful voice in global climate talks.
Trump, who has called climate change a “con job,” canceled nearly $8 billion in funding for clean energy projects in October (though a judge later ruled that some of those terminations were unlawful). And the Energy Department announced Wednesday that it will spend $175 million to extend the life of six coal plants — the latest in a series of moves to prop up coal.
Last year was the third-warmest in modern history, according to the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service. The last 11 years have been the 11 hottest ever recorded.
Trump and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin also announced Thursday that the agency is removing all greenhouse gas emissions standards for vehicles.
"We are repealing the ridiculous endangerment finding and terminating all additional green emissions standards imposed unnecessarily on vehicle models and engines between 2012 and 2027 and beyond," Trump said.
The EPA will still regulate pollutants in tailpipe emissions that hamper air quality, such as carbon monoxide, lead and ozone.
Barack Obama, whose administration established the endangerment finding, said in a statement on Thursday that without it, Americans will be “less safe, less healthy and less able to fight climate change, all so the fossil fuel industry can make even more money.”
The U.S. Climate Alliance, which is led by California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers, said the repeal was “unlawful, ignores basic science, and denies reality.”
Several organizations have already announced their intention to sue, including the American Lung Association and American Public Health Association.
“As organizations committed to protecting public health, we will challenge this unlawful repeal,” they said in a statement.
