President Donald Trump announced the repeal of the Environmental Protection Agency’s 2009 “endangerment finding,” a landmark scientific determination that identified greenhouse gases as a threat to public health and welfare. The decision dismantles the legal foundation for federal climate regulations and immediately eliminates emissions standards for automobiles.
Trump described the finding as “a scam” and insisted that climate change poses no risk to public health. He argued that the rollback would save more than $1 trillion in regulatory costs and reduce the price of new cars by thousands of dollars.
The move places other climate protections at risk, including rules targeting carbon dioxide from power plants and methane leaks from oil and gas operations. Legal challenges are expected to follow quickly, as the Supreme Court’s 2007 ruling in Massachusetts v. EPA established greenhouse gases as pollutants under the Clean Air Act and directed the agency to assess their danger.
Democrats and environmental groups condemned the repeal. Former president Barack Obama warned that the decision would leave Americans “less safe, less healthy and less able to fight climate change.” Manish Bapna, president of the Natural Resources Defense Council, called it “the single biggest attack in history on the United States federal government’s efforts to tackle the climate crisis.”
The original endangerment finding reflected overwhelming scientific consensus that six greenhouse gases contribute to climate change and threaten public welfare. Its removal marks the most sweeping rollback of U.S. climate policy to date.
