The Trump administration on Thursday rescinded a landmark scientific discovery that provided the legal basis for federal regulations limiting greenhouse gas emissions, dealing a devastating blow to efforts to combat climate change.
The Environmental Protection Agency, created in 2009 under President Barack Obama, classified carbon dioxide, methane and four other greenhouse gases as threats to public health and welfare.
It underpins Clean Air Act emissions standards and regulations for passenger cars and light trucks, power plants, and oil and gas industry facilities.
President Donald Trump said at the White House with Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin that EPA is “formally closing the so-called endangered findings based on the process we just completed.”
Zeldin said all greenhouse gas emission standards for light, medium and heavy vehicles have been eliminated based on the endangerment finding. “Car manufacturers will no longer be under pressure to transition their fleets to electric vehicles,” he said.
This endangerment finding emerged from a 2007 Supreme Court ruling that greenhouse gases are air pollutants under the Clean Air Act, and the EPA must determine whether they pose a threat to public health.
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin speaks accompanied by US President Donald Trump at the White House in Washington, DC, on February 12, 2026.
Jonathan Ernst | Reuters
Mr. Zeldin’s decision to rescind the findings is the most significant action taken so far in the Trump administration’s campaign to roll back U.S. regulations addressing climate change. He described the repeal as the largest deregulatory move in U.S. history.
President Obama said in a social media post that the Trump administration’s actions will make the United States “less safe, less healthy, and less capable of fighting climate change. All to make the fossil fuel industry even more profitable.”
The Sierra Club, the largest environmental organization in the United States, said President Trump had officially declared climate denialism “an official policy of the government.”
He warned that repealing greenhouse gas standards would not only put the public at risk but also expose the industry to a flood of lawsuits. In a unanimous decision in 2011, the Supreme Court ruled that companies cannot be sued under federal common law over greenhouse gas emissions because the agency is delegated to regulate them.
President Trump is seeking to undermine the Biden administration’s efforts to free up fossil fuel production in the United States and transition to renewable energy and electric vehicles. He pulled the U.S. out of the Paris climate accord and eliminated key tax subsidies for solar power, wind power, and electric vehicles.
