On Thursday, February 12, the Trump administration deleted the scientific finding that underpinned the federal government’s legal power to fight climate change for nearly two decades.
US President Donald Trump announced the revocation of the 2009 “danger finding”, the EPA’s decision that greenhouse gases threaten human health and welfare.
With this decision is the federal government’s legal authority to regulate carbon dioxide, methane, and other planet-warming pollutants from vehicles, power plants, and oil and gas operations.
At the White House, Trump said, “This is about as big as it gets” flanked by EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin.
“We are officially ending the so-called danger of finding a disastrous Obama-era policy,” Trump added.
The finding was first established under the Clean Air Act and has been the legal basis for virtually every federal climate regulation since 2009.
With its repeal, the EPA can no longer limit emissions from the nation’s biggest sources of climate pollution, even as scientists warn of accelerating heat waves, wildfires, droughts and extreme weather.
The repeal, called the “holy grail” of what Zeldin called the “climate change religion,” is contingent, from a legal standpoint, on the fact that Congress never authorized the regulation of greenhouse gases and that the Obama and Biden administrations overstepped their authority.
Zeldin said, “If Congress didn’t approve it, EPA shouldn’t be doing it. If Congress wants EPA to regulate the hell out of greenhouse gases, then clearly Congress can make it law.”
But critics called the move a disastrous abdication of duty.
Manish Bapna, president of the Natural Resource Defense Council, “this is a knockout blow in the years-long battle by oil, gas and coal interests to stop America’s transition to clean energy. The science and the law are crystal clear.”
Legal challenges are currently underway. The American Lung Association announced that it plans to file a lawsuit against the decision.
“The repeal is illegal,” according to them. Environmental legal experts believe the Supreme Court has “repeatedly and expressly recognized” the EPA’s power in previous decisions, including as recently as 2022.
If upheld, the repeal would make it impossible for the EPA to regulate carbon emissions forever and would prevent any future administration from being able to restore those powers without an act of Congress.
“We will see them in court and we will win,” Bapna said.
