Trump’s EPA repeals landmark climate finding in gift to ‘billionaire polluters’ | Trump administration

The Trump administration has revoked the fundamental scientific determination that gives the government the ability to regulate global warming pollution. The move has been described as a gift to “billionaire polluters” at the expense of Americans’ health.

The danger finding, that the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere endangers public health and welfare, has allowed the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) since 2009 to limit heat-trapping pollution from vehicles, power plants and other industrial sources.

Donald Trump called the move “the largest deregulatory measure in American history.”

“It’s an important question if you’re in the environmental business,” he told reporters Thursday. “This is about as big as it gets.”

The move is part of a broader anti-environmental campaign by Trump, which has seen him repeal pollution rules and boost oil and gas.

On social media, Barack Obama said repeal would leave Americans “less safe, less healthy, and less able to fight climate change — all so the fossil fuel industry can make even more money.”

Former Secretary of State John Kerry called the new rule “un-American.”

“Repealing the endangerment findings takes Orwellian governance to new heights and results in enormous damage to people and property around the world,” said Kerry, who also served as Joe Biden’s climate envoy. “Ignoring the warning signs won’t stop the storm. It will put more Americans directly in its path.”

The final rule removes the government’s ability to impose requirements to track, report, and limit global heating pollution from cars and trucks. Transportation is the largest source of climate pollution in the United States.

It does not apply to regulations on stationary sources of emissions such as power plants and fossil fuel infrastructure, which are regulated in a separate section of the Clean Air Act, but it will also open the door to ending those standards.

Trump’s EPA separately proposed concluding that power plant emissions “do not contribute significantly to hazardous air pollution” and therefore should not be regulated. Joseph Goffman, who served as EPA air chief under Joe Biden, expects the agency to apply its vehicle-focused arguments to stationary polluters to eliminate endangerment findings for all sources of greenhouse gas emissions.

“Instead of the EPA’s entire house of cards for climate regulation collapsing at once today, it will be like a row of dominoes falling,” said Goffman, who helped write and implement the Clean Air Act and worked directly on the endangerment findings.

Environmental advocates condemned the move as illegal. Many environmental groups have vowed to sue the EPA over the removal, as has the state of California.

“If this reckless decision survives legal challenges, it will lead to more deadly wildfires, more deaths from extreme heat, more climate-related floods and droughts, and greater threats to communities nationwide – all while EPA rejects the overwhelming science that has protected public health for decades,” California Governor Gavin Newsom said in a statement.

The move marks “the most aggressive and ruthless act of dismantling public health protections in the agency’s 55-year history,” said Dominique Browning, director and co-founder of the environmental advocacy group Moms Clean Air Force.

In a press release, the EPA said the move would save the United States $1.3 billion, while Trump said Thursday the move would “save American consumers billions of dollars.”

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said the Obama and Biden administrations used the discovery of the threat “to push into existence a left-wing wish list of costly climate policies.”

“Who paid the biggest price? Hard-working families, small businesses, the millions of Americans who just want a reliable, affordable car to get to work, take their kids to school or go to church on Sunday,” he said.

But while the rollback could save some companies money, experts note it could have dire consequences for the well-being and pocketbooks of ordinary Americans.

An analysis by the green group Environmental Defense Fund found that fully repealing the endangerment findings, combined with Trump’s proposal to lower motor vehicle standards, would result in up to 18 billion additional tons of global-warming pollution by 2055 — the same as the annual emissions of China, the world’s largest polluter — and impose up to $4.7 billion in additional spending related to climate and air pollution harmful by then.

Zeldin submitted the repeal of the legal ruling for consideration by the White House last month. In July, he formally announced his intention to rescind that finding, justifying his proposal with a widely criticized Energy Department report questioning climate science.

The agency received half a million comments on the proposal. Last month, a federal judge ruled that the Department of Energy’s July report was created illegally.

In repealing the endangerment finding, the EPA asserts that the Clean Air Act is intended only to regulate pollution “that harms health or the environment through local and regional exposure.” But there is scientific consensus that, by trapping heat in the atmosphere, greenhouse gas emissions intensify dangerous extreme weather events, allowing diseases to spread more quickly and making illnesses ranging from allergies to lung disease worse.

Trump described the discovery as “the legal basis for the new green scam,” which he claimed “the Obama and Biden administration used to destroy countless jobs.”

But the new rule will have disastrous consequences for the American working class, said Jason Walsh, executive director of the BlueGreen Alliance, a coalition of labor unions and environmental groups.

“Billionaires like Donald Trump are not suffering the ravages of climate change,” he said. “Workers do it.”

The rollback comes a month after the Trump administration announced it would withdraw the United States from the U.N.’s core agreement to address the climate crisis, as well as from the world’s leading group of climate scientists. Over the past year, Zeldin has also launched an all-out offensive against climate, air, water and chemical protection. The EPA also removed critical climate-focused science and data from its web pages.

“This is all part of the Trump administration’s authoritarian plan to replace facts with propaganda, to enrich a few while harming the rest of us,” said Rachel Cleetus, senior policy director for the climate and energy program at the science advocacy group the Union of Concerned Scientists. “Administrator Zeldin has entirely abdicated EPA’s responsibility to protect our health and the environment.”

The EPA said it determined the United States would save billions each year by revoking the threat determination. But the agency’s analysis didn’t take into account the money and lives saved by environmental and public health protections that the change would eliminate, experts say.

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

“This decision clearly shows that Trump is willing to make our families sicker and less safe, all for the benefit of a few billionaire polluters,” Witt said.

Some industry groups have been reluctant to support completely overturning the threat findings. The American Petroleum Institute, the main U.S. oil lobby group, said last month it supported repealing the hazard findings for vehicles, but not for stationary sources of pollution like power plants.