The sun sets behind a blazing gas flare at the Dora (Daura) refinery complex in Baghdad, December 22, 2024.
Ahmad Al Rubai | AFP | Getty Images
The Environmental Protection Agency has moved to finalize the reversal of key scientific discoveries that underpin the U.S. government’s ability to regulate climate and greenhouse gases, the agency told CNBC.
The EPA took a significant step over the weekend to rescind the 2009 “crisis finding” by submitting a proposed rule to the Office of Management and Budget, the EPA’s Office of Media told CNBC. The agency originally proposed canceling the agreement in July last year.
“This week at the White House, President Trump will take the most significant deregulatory action in history to further loosen America’s grip on energy and lower costs,” White House press secretary Caroline Leavitt said in an email to CNBC.
Revoking the endangered status designation would represent the Trump administration’s biggest broadside yet against efforts to combat climate change, and would be a boon for the fossil fuel industry, which has long fought climate change regulations. The endangerment finding determined that greenhouse gases pose a risk to public health and welfare and gave the EPA the authority to regulate greenhouse gases.
Effectively, EPA’s action would immediately eliminate emissions controls from the nation’s most polluting transportation sector.
By rescinding this endangered finding, which was signed during the Obama administration and is the basis of a trove of U.S. climate policies enacted since then, the agency would lose its “statutory authority under Section 202(a) of the Clean Air Act (CAA) to establish standards for certain motor vehicle emissions,” the agency said.
Since that ruling, the EPA has been regulating emissions from cars, other vehicles, and power plants. Its revocation would pave the way for challenges to these regulations.
Reversing the endangered designation would almost certainly face legal challenges from environmental groups, and the legal implications could be delicate. The finding of jeopardy was upheld by the court. In 2007, the Supreme Court’s decision in Massachusetts v. EPA paved the way for this finding. By 2023, the High Court has refused to hear an appeal challenging the endangered status.
The Wall Street Journal first reported the administration’s plans.
