\n<\/p>\n
The Trump administration has dismantled the basis for all US climate regulations, in its most confrontational anti-environment move yet.<\/p>\n
The 2009 endangerment finding determined that greenhouse gases threaten public health and welfare and should therefore be controlled by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). By revoking it on Thursday, officials eliminated the legal foundation enabling the government to control planet-heating pollution.<\/p>\n
Trump said the rollback constituted \u201cthe single largest deregulatory action in American history\u201d, while EPA secretary Lee Zeldin said it would end \u201cthe holy grail of federal regulatory overreach\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe endangerment finding, and the regulations that were based on it, didn\u2019t just regulate emissions,\u201d said Zeldin. \u201cIt regulated and targeted the American dream.\u201d<\/p>\n
The move prompted widespread condemnation from climate experts and advocates for environmental, public health, and economic justice. Asked to respond to environmental concerns about the new rule on Thursday, Trump said: \u201cDon\u2019t worry about it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis has nothing to do with public health,\u201d he said of the endangerment finding. \u201cThis is all a scam, a giant scam.\u201d<\/p>\n
The repeal is part of Trump\u2019s sweeping assault on climate policy. On Thursday, he said the endangerment finding formed \u201cthe basis for the green new scam\u201d. Since returning to office last January, Trump\u2019s administration has moved aggressively to dismantle pollution rules and boost fossil fuels. That anti-environmental agenda, critics say, serves his fossil-fuel donors.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese modern-day robber barons would gladly add to their already obscene piles of wealth by making us less safe from climate change,\u201d said Manuel Salgado, federal research manager at the nonprofit We Act for Environmental Justice.<\/p>\n
An EPA spokesperson told the Guardian: \u201cThe Trump EPA is following the law, ending the bogus overreach of previous administrations done by agenda-driven climate zealots.\u201d<\/p>\n
In 2007, the supreme court ruled in the lawsuit Massachusetts v EPA that the Clean Air Act gives the government authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from motor vehicles \u2013 something advocates and scientists had demanded for years.<\/p>\n
Two years later, under Barack Obama, the EPA issued the endangerment finding, which determined that six greenhouse gases threaten the public health and welfare of current and future generations.<\/p>\n
The finding empowered the agency to act and barred it from ignoring the climate crisis, becoming the bedrock of federal climate regulation.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n
Trump\u2019s EPA contends that a section of the Clean Air Act which regulates emissions from cars and trucks applies only to \u201cpollution that harms health or the environment through local and regional exposure\u201d. The move effectively voids all federal greenhouse gas regulations on motor vehicles.<\/p>\n
It will also prompt a broader unspooling of climate regulations, experts say. Stationary pollution sources such as power plants and oil and gas facilities are regulated under a different section of the Clean Air Act, but the legal theory laid out by EPA on Thursday attacks the endangerment finding in its entirety, said Andres Restrepo, a senior attorney at the green group the Sierra Club.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat they\u2019re basically doing is announcing a position that the Clean Air Act does not allow EPA to find that greenhouse gases endanger health and welfare,\u201d he said. \u201cThat will require them to end emissions standards for power plants, too, because they cannot continue regulating power plants if that\u2019s their legal position.\u201d<\/p>\n
Joseph Goffman, who served as EPA air chief under Joe Biden, expects the agency will apply its vehicles-focused arguments to stationary polluters in the coming months, noting it has already laid the groundwork for that move. Over the summer, officials proposed to find that emissions from power plants \u201cdo not contribute significantly to dangerous air pollution\u201d and therefore should not be regulated.<\/p>\n
\u201cInstead of the entire house of cards of all EPA climate regulation collapsing all at once today, it\u2019s going to be like a row of dominoes falling,\u201d said Goffman, who helped write and implement the Clean Air Act and worked directly on the endangerment finding.<\/p>\n
The Guardian has contacted EPA to confirm its plans for power plant regulations.<\/p>\n
Adam Zuckerman, senior clean vehicles campaigner on the climate program at consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, said this week\u2019s move could also have \u201cperilous\u201d consequences for US carmakers and the workers they employ.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs China and Europe race toward building [electric vehicles], the American auto industry will need to make some challenging choices about how it decides to invest in innovation,\u201d he said \u201cThe move puts American automakers in a bind, pushing them to make dirty, obsolete vehicles for the US that they can\u2019t sell to most of the world.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/li>\n
The administration says their new rule will save the US $1.3tn.<\/p>\n
But that claim, experts say, ignores the far greater costs Americans will incur due to extreme weather and other impacts of climate change.<\/p>\n
One estimate from environmental nonprofit Environmental Defense Fund found the repeal of the endangerment finding could impose up to $4.7tn in additional expenses tied to climate-warming and toxic pollution over the next two decades.<\/p>\n
\u201cToday\u2019s action by President Trump, if unchecked by the courts or Congress, will put more money in the pockets of the CEOs who pollute our air and cut big checks for Republican politicians,\u201d said Jason Walsh, executive director of BlueGreen Alliance, a coalition of labor unions and environmental groups.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut it will put more regular folks in the hospital or force them to flee climate disasters while the billionaire class is safely protected on their mountaintops and private islands.\u201d<\/p>\n
The EPA spokesperson said: \u201cUnder President Trump, EPA is returning to common\u2011sense policies and adhering to the law. That is how we keep dollars in the pockets of American families and protect human health and the environment, refusing to let any \u2018climate religion\u2019 trump the laws passed by Congress.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/li>\n
Green groups, health-focused organizations, and the states of California and Connecticut have pledged to sue the administration over the rollback, noting that federal courts have repeatedly upheld and affirmed the endangerment finding.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis cynical and devastating action by the Trump EPA will not go forward without a fight,\u201d said Manish Bapna, president of the conservation organization the Natural Resources Defense Council. \u201cWe will see them in court \u2013 and we will win.\u201d<\/p>\n
Groups will begin filing litigation to the DC circuit court \u201cvery soon\u201d, said Michael Gerrard, a climate law expert at Columbia University. The challenges could wend their way through the courts for years. But they could also be settled quickly, said Gerrard.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have quite a history of the supreme court jumping into these kinds of things quickly,\u201d he said, noting that they high court took unprecedentedly quick action to issue a stay on Obama-era power plant regulations in 2016. \u201cThis could all take less than a year, potentially.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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