\n The Trump administration delivered a deadly blow to longstanding US climate policy on Thursday, finalizing rules that revoke the Environmental Protection Agency\u2019s ability to regulate climate pollution.\n <\/p>\n
\n First issued in 2009, the endangerment finding determined that six greenhouse gases could be categorized as dangerous to human health under the Clean Air Act. It has underpinned the EPA\u2019s authority to limit planet-warming pollution from the oil and gas industry, power plants and vehicles since the Obama administration and is considered the federal government\u2019s most powerful tool to tackle climate pollution and the country\u2019s contribution to the global crisis.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cWe are officially terminating the so-called endangerment finding,\u201d President Donald Trump said on Thursday, calling the policy \u201cdisastrous.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n Trump said repealing the regulations \u201chas nothing to do with public health.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cThis was all a scam, a giant scam,\u201d Trump said on Thursday. \u201cThis was a rip off of the country by Obama and Biden.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n In addition, the Trump administration will finalize a repeal of rules that regulate greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles, since they stem from the finding. Under former President Joe Biden, the EPA sought to tighten those standards to prod the auto industry to make more fuel-efficient hybrids and electric vehicles \u2014 an effort the industry has since backtracked on.\n <\/p>\n
\n By getting rid of the endangerment finding, the administration can more easily overturn other rules that reduce climate pollution emitted from power plants and oil and gas operations, although those will take separate regulatory processes to overturn.\n <\/p>\n
\n The full text of EPA\u2019s repeal of the endangerment finding wasn\u2019t made available before the Trump administration announced it, but the justification for the repeal laid out in an EPA press release relies far more on legal arguments than an outright rejection of climate science.\n <\/p>\n
\n The agency is arguing that the Obama and Biden administrations exceeded their legal authority when they used the Clean Air Act to regulate climate pollution. This is in contrast to last summer, when the agency first proposed the repeal. The EPA proposal was then based in part on a hastily produced report authored by five climate contrarians that questioned the severity of climate impacts like wildfires, extreme heat and stronger storms.\n <\/p>\n
\n Instead of doubling down on that Thursday, the Trump EPA in a press release concluded the Clean Air Act \u201cdoes not provide statutory authority for EPA\u201d to put forward vehicle emissions standards \u201cincluding for the purpose of addressing global climate change, and therefore has no legal basis for the Endangerment Finding and resulting regulations.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n However, in the same press release announcing the repeal, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin nodded to the administration\u2019s opposition to climate policy.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cReferred to by some as the \u2018Holy Grail\u2019 of the \u2018climate change religion,\u2019 the Endangerment Finding is now eliminated,\u201d Zeldin said in the EPA\u2019s press release. While speaking next to Trump on Thursday, however, Zeldin\u2019s remarks were slightly different.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cToday, the Trump EPA has finalized the single largest act of deregulation in the history of the United States of America. Referred to by some as the holy grail of federal regulatory overreach, the 2009 Obama EPA endangerment finding is now eliminated,\u201d Zeldin said on Thursday.\n <\/p>\n
\n Legal precedent has granted the government regulatory powers over climate pollution. The US Supreme Court ruled in 2007 that EPA had the authority to regulate climate pollution from greenhouse gases. And in 2022, the US Supreme Court upheld the EPA\u2019s authority to regulate greenhouse gases from power plants, but narrowed the agency\u2019s scope significantly, prompting the Biden administration to formulate rules aimed only at making individual power plants more efficient.\n <\/p>\n
\n The 2022 Supreme Court ruling \u201cnever questioned that EPA had the authority to regulate greenhouse gases,\u201d said Meredith Hankins, legal director for federal climate at the Natural Resources Defense Fund. \u201cThat was settled law.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n But the endangerment finding repeal will thrust that question back into the courts, where litigating the repeal could take years, and potentially go all the way to the nation\u2019s highest court. A former top Biden EPA official told CNN he believes this move shows the Trump administration is playing a legal long game.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cTheir definition of winning I believe has been and will be when they take final action and defend their action in the courts, to permanently remove EPA\u2019s Clean Air Act authority to regulate greenhouse gases,\u201d said Joe Goffman, who led EPA\u2019s Office of Air and Radiation under Biden.\n <\/p>\n
\n If the Trump administration repeal is \u201cupheld in court, no future EPA will be able to regulate (carbon dioxide) emissions,\u201d said Jeff Holmstead, an energy attorney with the law firm Bracewell, and a former high-ranking EPA official in the George W. Bush administration. Congress could pass a new law that specifically directs the EPA to regulate climate pollution, but there is little bipartisan consensus on addressing the issue.\n <\/p>\n
\n Zeldin laid out the agency\u2019s argument, saying EPA has no authority to regulate certain kinds of pollution unless Congress passes a law giving them express permission.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cIf Congress didn\u2019t authorize it, EPA shouldn\u2019t be doing it,\u201d Zeldin said on Thursday. \u201cIf Congress wants EPA to regulate the heck out of greenhouse gasses emitted from motor vehicles, then Congress can clearly make that the law.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n Climate, public health and environmental groups are already promising legal challenges to the agency\u2019s move.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cEarthjustice and our partners will see the Trump administration in court,\u201d said Abigail Dillen, president of the environmental legal group. \u201cThe courts have repeatedly affirmed EPA\u2019s obligation to clean up climate pollution. There is no way to reconcile EPA\u2019s decision with the law, the science, and the reality of disasters that are hitting us harder every year.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n On Thursday, a coalition of public health groups including the American Lung Association and the American Public Health Association announced they would sue the administration, calling the regulatory appeal \u201cunlawful.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n Attorneys for the Natural Resources Defense Fund recently emphasized that even with a conservative Supreme Court, the EPA\u2019s authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions has been reaffirmed multiple times. NRDC attorneys suggested that EPA\u2019s legal arguments are relatively novel, which could make the EPA\u2019s move more vulnerable to being overturned in court.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cIt\u2019s not something that has been done before,\u201d said Hankins.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Trump administration delivered a deadly blow to longstanding US climate policy on Thursday, finalizing rules that revoke…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":473512,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[49,48,295,66],"class_list":{"0":"post-473511","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-environment","11":"tag-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473511","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=473511"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473511\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/473512"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=473511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=473511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=473511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}