The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency wants to rescind its legal authority to regulate greenhouse gases, a move that could unravel climate protections in place for over a decade.
The EPA has proposed repealing its 2009 “endangerment finding,” a ruling that declared greenhouse gases a threat to public health and welfare. That decision gave the agency the legal basis to regulate emissions from vehicles, power plants, and other industries under the Clean Air Act.
Meanwhile, environmental justice advocates warn that rolling back greenhouse gas regulations could hit Black communities especially hard. These neighborhoods are more likely to be near highways, power plants, landfills, and industrial zones—sources of pollution that drive asthma, heart disease, and other health problems.
A 2021 EPA report found that Black Americans are 1.5 times more likely than white Americans to live in areas with the highest projected increases in pollution-related impacts due to climate change. “Communities already overburdened by environmental hazards will face even greater risks if protections are stripped away,” the NAACP said in a previous statement on climate policy.
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EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said the agency believes it overstepped its authority and that Congress never clearly gave it permission to regulate greenhouse gases. He called the move “the largest deregulatory action in the history of the United States,” according to The Washington Post.
The 2009 finding followed a 2007 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that defined carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases as air pollutants. That opened the door for federal action to limit emissions tied to climate change.
Removing the endangerment finding would block the EPA from enforcing most rules on carbon and methane pollution. That includes emission standards for cars and limits on pollution from fossil fuel plants.
Critics say the proposal is not only dangerous but also legally shaky and dismissive of decades of climate research.
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Zealan Hoover, a former EPA adviser, told The Post the move was “not just an attack on science but on common sense.”
“The National Climate Assessment provides over 2,000 pages of detailed evidence that climate change harms our health and welfare,” Hoover said. “But you can also ask the millions of Americans who have lost their homes and livelihoods to extreme fires, floods and storms that are only getting worse.”
Rachel Cleetus, a climate expert with the Union of Concerned Scientists, said the EPA’s arguments lack credibility.
“They are fringe arguments,” she told The Post. “They do not have credibility, and they go against the established science.”
Zeldin said the agency is not turning away from clean air or water but wants to balance environmental protection with economic growth.
Still, environmental groups and legal experts expect the proposal to face tough court challenges.
“They think this is a holy grail to get rid of the whole thing in one fell swoop,” said Richard Revesz, a law professor at New York University. He described the EPA’s legal reasoning as “haphazardly thrown together.”
“They just kind of pile it on, maybe hoping that one of them will stick,” he told The Post.
The EPA’s proposal also disputes findings from the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which many scientists view as a global benchmark for climate research.
In a related move, the U.S. Department of Energy released a report claiming that carbon-induced warming is less damaging than previously believed and that U.S. policy has a small impact on the global climate.
But other experts warn that the long-term costs of climate disasters, health problems, and infrastructure damage outweigh the benefits of cutting regulations.
Under the Biden administration, the EPA estimated that emissions limits would save one trillion dollars by 2055. The agency linked those savings to fewer hospital visits and early deaths.
David Doniger, a legal expert at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said the Clean Air Act clearly allows the EPA to act on climate change.
“The law unambiguously includes greenhouse gases as air pollutants,” Doniger told The Post. “And the law unambiguously makes it clear that the endangerment and contribution findings limit that to public health and science issues, not to broad economic and policy issues.”
Doniger said Americans are already seeing the effects of climate change.
“You’re asking the American people who are living through wildfires, floods, hurricanes, heat domes and so on, not to believe what they’re going through,” he said. “At some point what they’re claiming is going to appear to people to be mind-bogglingly false and out of touch.”
