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The United States has revoked scientific findings that have long been used as a central basis for action to regulate greenhouse gas emissions and combat climate change.
Thursday’s decision is President Donald Trump’s most aggressive move to roll back environmental regulations since the start of his second term.
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Under his leadership, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) finalized a rule revoking a 2009 government declaration known as an “endangered finding.”
It is the legal basis for nearly all climate regulations under the Clean Air Act against cars, power plants, and other sources of pollution that heat the planet.
The findings, established under Democratic President Barack Obama, prove that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases threaten public health and welfare.
But Republican President Trump called climate change a “hoax” and “the work of con artists.” He claimed that the finding that he was at risk was “one of the biggest frauds in history”, adding that it had “no basis in fact or law”.
“For generations, fossil fuels have saved millions of lives and lifted billions of people out of poverty around the world,” President Trump said Thursday at a ceremony at the White House.
He hailed the reversal of the endangered status designation as “the largest deregulatory action ever taken in U.S. history.”
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin also attended the ceremony and described the endangered discovery as “the holy grail of federal regulatory overreach.”
If the at-risk certification is withdrawn, all greenhouse gas emissions standards for cars and trucks will be abolished. Experts say it could also trigger a widespread dismantling of climate regulations for stationary sources such as power plants and oil and gas facilities.
But Thursday’s new rules are likely to face pushback in the U.S. court system.
Environmental law professor Anne Carlson told The Associated Press that overturning the findings would be “more disruptive” than other actions President Trump has taken to roll back environmental regulations.
Environmental groups described the move as the biggest attack on federal authorities fighting climate change in U.S. history. In the 17 years since it was approved, the evidence supporting the endangered findings has only grown stronger, they said.
As part of Thursday’s decision, the EPA also announced it would end tax credits for automakers that install automatic start-stop ignition systems in their vehicles. The device is intended to reduce emissions, but Zeldin said “everyone hates it.”
Zeldin, a former Republican lawmaker who was selected by President Trump to lead the EPA last year, criticized his Democratic predecessors, saying they “were going to bankrupt the country” in the name of tackling climate change.
Zeldin said the alarming findings “led to trillions of dollars of regulation that strangled every sector of the American economy, including the American auto industry,” and particularly criticized the leadership of Mr. Obama and former President Joe Biden.
“The Obama and Biden administrations have used this to force a left-wing wish list that includes costly climate change policies, electric vehicle mandates, and other requirements that infringe on consumer choice and affordability.”
The discovery that it is endangered has enabled a series of regulations aimed at protecting it from climate change and related threats.
These include deadly floods, extreme heat waves, devastating wildfires, and other natural disasters in the United States and around the world.
Gina McCarthy, a former EPA administrator and White House climate adviser in the Biden administration, called the Trump administration’s actions reckless.
“This EPA would rather spend time in court on behalf of the fossil fuel industry than protect us from pollution and the worsening effects of climate change,” she said.
The EPA has a clear scientific and legal obligation to regulate greenhouse gases, McCarthy explained, adding that the health and environmental risks posed by climate change “can no longer be ignored.”
Thursday’s EPA action follows President Trump’s executive order directing the Environmental Protection Agency to submit a report on the “legality and continuing applicability” of endangerment findings.
Conservatives have long sought to roll back rules they consider overly restrictive and economically damaging to limit greenhouse gases that cause global warming.
Democratic Sen. Ed Markey said it would have been “natural” to uphold the endangered finding.
“Mr. Trump and Mr. Zeldin are putting our lives and our futures at risk,” he said in a video statement.
“They have rolled back one protection after another in their race to the bottom. Zeldin is not saying, ‘Let them eat cake,’ they are saying, ‘Let them smoke soot.'”
