Trump to repeal ruling allowing regulation of planet-heating gases | US news

In what is shaping up to be the boldest anti-environmental move yet, the Trump administration will roll back on Thursday the mechanism allowing the government to regulate pollution caused by global warming, the White House press secretary told reporters.

“President Trump will be joined by EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin to formalize the recession based on the 2009 Obama-era findings on the threat,” Karoline Leavitt said at a press conference Tuesday. “This will be the largest deregulatory measure in American history.”

The findings determined that CO2 and other greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare, establishing a legal basis for regulating them under the Clean Air Act. Its reversal will be a “devastating blow to millions of Americans facing growing risks from unnatural disasters,” said Meredith Hankins, federal climate legal director at the National Resources Defense Council, a nonprofit environmental advocacy organization.

“Trump’s EPA cynically claims that climate change does not pose a risk to the health and well-being of Americans,” Hankins said. “This is the largest attack ever on federal authority to combat the climate crisis.

This rollback will certainly lead to legal challenges.

“This is not going to stand without a fight,” Hankins added. “The EPA’s sloppy legal arguments should be ridiculed outside of court. We will see them in court – and we will win.”

The Environmental Defense Fund has also promised to sue the EPA over the rule, said Fred Krupp, its president.. Abigail Dillen, president of the green legal organization Earthjustice, also said her group “will see the Trump administration in court.”

In a statement, an EPA spokesperson called the endangerment finding “one of the most damaging decisions in modern history” and said “hardworking families and small businesses have paid the price.”

“EPA is actively working to deliver historic action for the American people,” the spokesperson said.

Trump signed an executive order on his first day back in office ordering the EPA to evaluate whether the endangerment findings should be preserved.

After Zeldin announced plans to rescind the findings in July 2025, the agency received half a million comments on the proposal. He then submitted the repeal of the legal ruling for consideration by the White House last month.

Leavitt said Tuesday the rollback would save Americans $1.3 billion, but did not explain how officials arrived at that figure. While the new rule could save some companies money, it could result in trillions in climate damage and health costs, experts warn. The EPA’s targeted climate rules could prevent tens of thousands of deaths and save $275 billion for each year they are in effect, according to an Associated Press analysis published in July.

“Trump and Zeldin are telling our families: We will let you get sicker and see your health care costs skyrocket as long as oil and gas CEOs can profit,” said Alex Witt, senior adviser to the environmental advocacy group Climate Power.

The hazard finding provides the legal basis for virtually all federal climate regulations, including those on vehicles, oil and gas operations, and power plants. But the final rule, Zeldin told the Wall Street Journal this week, will apply only to emissions standards for cars and trucks, not those governing stationary sources such as power plants.

The EPA has not directly confirmed the scope of the planned change. The spokesperson said: “The hazard finding is the legal prerequisite used by the Obama and Biden administrations to justify billions of dollars in greenhouse gas regulations covering new vehicles and engines. Without this finding, EPA would not have the statutory authority…to prescribe standards for certain motor vehicle emissions.”

The agency separately proposed concluding that power plant emissions “do not contribute significantly to hazardous air pollution” and therefore should not be regulated.

Gretchen Goldman, president of science advocacy group Union of Concerned Scientists, said: “The science establishing the damage to human health and the environment from global warming emissions was clear in 2009 and is even more undeniable today. »

“The EPA has a legal obligation to regulate this pollution under the Clean Air Act,” said Goldman, who previously worked at the Department of Transportation and the White House. “The American public deserves a government that will meet the challenge of the climate crisis head-on with proven policy solutions, and not actively serve as an agent of destruction by worsening the crisis to increase fossil fuel profits. »