EPA Unveils Plan to Scrap Authority to Regulate Greenhouse Gases

The Trump administration is formally proposing to scrap the U.S. government’s authority to regulate greenhouse gases as an air pollutant, a move that sets the stage to severely weaken Washington’s ability to fight climate change.

The Environmental Protection Agency on Tuesday unveiled a proposal to abolish the landmark determination that planet-warming gases endanger public health and welfare. If finalized, the measure would lay the foundation to unwind a host of regulations limiting emissions from power plants, oil wells and automobiles.

Rolling back the 2009 endangerment finding would be among the most far-reaching steps yet by President Donald Trump’s administration to gut U.S. capacity to fight climate change. The finding forms the bedrock of the government’s authority to impose limits on carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases. Ending it would be squarely at odds with the scientific consensus that those gases are causing climate change that’s already leading to rising seas and more intense storms.

Environmentalists have argued that any move to reverse the endangerment finding not only bucks scientific conclusions about the ways carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases interact with the world’s atmosphere, but also imperils the planet. Efforts to limit emissions now are critical to restraining the world’s temperature rise and avoiding more tipping points in which the consequences of climate change are magnified.

“As Americans reel from deadly floods and heat waves, the Trump administration is trying to argue that the emissions turbocharging these disasters are not a threat,” said Christy Goldfuss, executive director of the Natural Resources Defense Council. “It boggles the mind and endangers the nation’s safety and welfare.”

The Supreme Court effectively compelled the EPA to asses the impact of greenhouse gases in 2007 when it affirmed the agency’s authority to regulate them as air pollutants under the Clean Air Act. At that point, it was up to the EPA to determine whether greenhouse gases constituted a threat that should be regulated.

Some conservatives have argued that Congress designed the Clean Air Act to regulate localized pollutants, not those with widespread, global effects. Critics have been pushing for repeal of the endangerment finding ever since.

“It removes the basis for all the climate nonsense that we’ve had to endure for the last several decades,” said Marc Morano, who runs the climate-skeptic website ClimateDepot.com. “The Trump administration’s goal is to ensure that future presidential administrations can’t quickly reverse climate and energy policies without having to undergo major bureaucratic hurdles.”

Energy companies and some Trump allies are deeply divided over the wisdom of efforts to throw out the endangerment finding. Some are concerned the effort would siphon time and manpower from other regulatory priorities, including rewriting Biden-era rules governing power plant and vehicle pollution.

The effort requires the EPA to go through the formal, time-consuming federal rulemaking process. The measure could be finalized by the end of the year, though environmentalists have already vowed to fight it in court. The agency is likely to rely on the endangerment finding shift to justify pivots on pollution curbs. But if repeal of the measure doesn’t withstand legal scrutiny, it could undermine those changes too.

“From what I have heard I am concerned their reversal of the endangerment finding may not stand up in court,” said Jeff Holmstead, a former EPA official in the Bush administration. “And that would leave all the costly Biden climate change regulations in place.”

Energy firms also have warned that doing away with the endangerment finding—as well as the federal climate regulations it supports—could revive public nuisance lawsuits against oil producers and power plant operators. Under a 2010 Supreme Court decision, federal climate regulation under the Clean Air Act has effectively precluded those claims.

Top photo: Emissions rise from the Royal Dutch Shell Plc Norco Refinery in Norco, Louisiana, on Friday, June 12, 2020.

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