{"id":113427,"date":"2026-02-13T22:32:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-13T22:32:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/113427\/"},"modified":"2026-02-13T22:32:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-13T22:32:09","slug":"what-the-end-of-the-endangerment-finding-means-for-pennsylvania","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/113427\/","title":{"rendered":"What the end of the ‘endangerment finding’ means for Pennsylvania"},"content":{"rendered":"

President Trump announced Thurday that his administration would rescind the legal underpinning of the nation\u2019s climate rules.<\/a> From the White House, the President called it the largest deregulatory move in American history. The so-called \u201cendangerment finding<\/a>\u201d is the rationale the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency uses to regulate greenhouse gases.<\/p>\n

The Allegheny Front\u2019s Kara Holsopple spoke with reporter Susan Phillips of WHYY\u2019s Climate Desk to learn more.<\/p>\n

LISTEN to the conversation<\/p>\n

https:\/\/s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com\/media.alleghenyfront.org\/AF021326_KH_Endangerment2way.mp3<\/a><\/p>\n

Kara Holsopple: What is the endangerment finding, and which industries does it impact?<\/p>\n

Susan Phillips: Back in 2009, during the Obama administration, the EPA determined that climate change impacts public health. That was a legal determination, but it was based on strong scientific evidence and it allowed the EPA to regulate greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change, including carbon dioxide and methane. <\/p>\n

This was done through the Clean Air Act. This was done because Congress was not acting to regulate greenhouse gases. It was the basis for Biden\u2019s very ambitious climate agenda.\u00a0<\/p>\n

What you need to know about EPA\u2019s effort to dump legal underpinning of climate rules<\/a><\/p>\n

The largest impact has been on cars and trucks. Creating rules that make them more fuel efficient, i.e., burn less fossil fuels, make them cleaner. This would have had the impact of reducing greenhouse gases because vehicles are the largest source of carbon emissions in the U.S. <\/p>\n

But at the same time, it would have the effect of cleaning up the air we breathe. Looking at all this snow turning from white to black over the past several weeks really shows us how much carbon pollution from cars and trucks we all breathe each day. <\/p>\n

This endangerment finding was also the basis for the attempts to cut emissions from power plants, although that didn\u2019t happen. The first Trump administration overturned Obama\u2019s plan<\/a>, and then the Supreme Court ruled in 2022<\/a> that the EPA didn\u2019t have the authority to regulate power plant [carbon] emissions. <\/p>\n

The other thing was methane from the oil and gas industry. The EPA under Biden implemented rules to curb methane emissions from oil and gas infrastructure. But that\u2019s also on the chopping block or could be.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Kara Holsopple: What is the EPA\u2019s reasoning behind this move?\u00a0<\/p>\n

Susan Phillips: They don\u2019t really have a strong scientific explanation for getting rid of it. It\u2019s primarily legal and ideological<\/a>. Trump has been a vocal climate denier, as we all know. <\/p>\n

Essentially, those conservatives who have been pushing to get rid of the endangerment finding say that it was a way for Democrats and progressives to shoehorn their way into regulating carbon emissions and that the rationale was flawed. EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin talked about this last March when he said that they are going to drive a dagger<\/a> into the heart of the climate change religion.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u2018Cartoon villainy\u2019: Former regulators say EPA\u2019s planned rollbacks would reverse 50 years of environmental progress<\/a><\/p>\n

Zeldin\u2019s EPA also says that this move will save consumers and businesses trillions of dollars because they say now it will be cheaper to buy cars and trucks. But environmentalists push back on that and basically say the opposite \u2013 that it\u2019s going to cost consumers more money in the form of using more gasoline, so it\u2019s more money at the pump, and it will impact health, and so that always drives costs up.<\/p>\n

They\u2019re saying Pennsylvanians will now be required to pay up to $57 billion more for fuel over the next 30 years. When it comes to health\u2026they say that will amount to $12 billion.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Environmental Defense Fund did an analysis<\/a> specifically for Pennsylvania, for example. They\u2019re saying that Pennsylvanians will now be required to pay up to $57 billion more for fuel over the next 30 years. When it comes to health impacts in Pennsylvania, they say that will amount to $12 billion.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Kara Holsopple: How could this impact climate regulations in states like Pennsylvania?\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Susan Phillips: Pennsylvania, like other states, is not allowed to implement their own fuel efficiency standards. Only the federal government can do that with the exception of California<\/a>. States had been allowed to follow California\u2019s lead to enact those stricter standards, but the Trump administration is working to eliminate that exception. <\/p>\n

EPA\u2019s methane rules, which would force oil and gas producers to plug leaks, could also be on the chopping block. Interestingly, though, Big Oil apparently wants the federal government to regulate methane. I think one of the reasons why they want that overall is less methane emissions is good for their brand, but also they can continue to push natural gas as much cleaner than coal, for example. <\/p>\n

Even though Pennsylvania can\u2019t enact its own clean car standards, it does have the authority to implement requirements for how much clean energy is produced by power plants. So that\u2019s one way that a lot of states could go to try to tackle climate emissions.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It\u2019s interesting because the state doesn\u2019t really have as ambitious goals as, say, Delaware<\/a> or New Jersey, but Governor Shapiro has proposed to i<\/a>ncrease the current requirement to 35% clean energy by 2035<\/a>. He\u2019s also proposed a cap and invest<\/a> plan to limit carbon dioxide emissions from power plants.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Kara Holsopple: How are environmental groups responding to this development?\u00a0<\/p>\n

Susan Phillips: Like you would expect. My email box is full of reactions from every environmental group you\u2019ve ever heard of and those you haven\u2019t heard of. They don\u2019t like it. They point to climate disasters like the California wildfires, for example, and increasingly destructive storms, deadly heat waves, and the fact that the U.S. is the largest emitter of greenhouse gas emissions.<\/p>\n

At the end of the day, it\u2019s Congress that needs to act in order to avoid this seesaw that we\u2019ve been seeing between different federal administrations.<\/p>\n

Also, the added benefit of cleaning up the air we breathe would end and so they say this will lead to more deaths from heart attacks and of course more breathing issues generally, like people with asthma would have a harder time because the plans to clean up the air are now eliminated.<\/p>\n

Kara Holsopple: EPA\u2019s ability to regulate greenhouse gases stems from a 2007 Supreme Court case<\/a>. What could the legal fight against the EPA\u2019s move to repeal the endangerment finding look like?<\/p>\n

Susan Phillips: There will likely be years of litigation that will eventually lead to the Supreme Court. But, again, it puts the states in the driver\u2019s seat in some ways. They can determine the percentage of clean energy produced by power plants. But that will be a patchwork across the country and not necessarily make up for broad-based federal policy on climate. At the end of the day, it\u2019s Congress that needs to act in order to avoid this seesaw that we\u2019ve been seeing between different federal administrations as Republicans come in or Democrats come in. It\u2019s been going back and forth for years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"President Trump announced Thurday that his administration would rescind the legal underpinning of the nation\u2019s climate rules. From…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":113428,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[54120,28,30,29],"class_list":["post-113427","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pennsylvania","tag-13-february-2026-episode","tag-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania-headlines","tag-pennsylvania-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113427","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=113427"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113427\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/113428"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}