Today at 1:30 PM EST, the Trump administration — with President Donald Trump and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin on hand — is set to formally rescind the 2009 EPA “Endangerment Finding” that has long served as the legal basis for federal regulation of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act.
That 2009 finding declared that CO₂ and other greenhouse gases “endanger public health and welfare,” providing the statutory foundation for decades of climate-related regulatory actions from vehicle emissions standards to power plant rules. The White House has characterized this reversal as the largest deregulatory action in U.S. history, expected to save consumers and industry trillions by eliminating what it views as overly burdensome regulations tied to the finding’s legal authority.
Supporters of the move see it as a long-overdue correction of what they consider a scientifically and legally flimsy basis for climate regulation, arguing that CO₂ is not a pollutant in the traditional sense and that the Clean Air Act was never intended to be applied in this way. Opponents, including environmental groups and many scientists, have blasted the repeal as an attack on settled law and an abandonment of federal responsibility to address climate-related harms, and they are already lining up to challenge the action in court. Regardless of one’s stance on climate science, today’s action represents a historic shift in the role of the federal government in regulating greenhouse gases and will likely spark years of litigation over the EPA’s authority and the underlying science.
It’s about time that action was taken on this issue since the Democrats stubbornly continued supporting it. The joke about the EPA finding is that if greenhouse gases were becoming such serious health risks for Americans, why has the population continued to rise since 2009 so that it’s now almost 350 million? If it had been declining, the alarmists could have claimed this was proof that carbon emissions were the culprits. Likewise with the global population, except it and life expectancy have continued to increase. So by rescinding this almost totally unnecessary “finding” the Trump administration is clearing the way for the reactivation of coal plants that will provide dependable, affordable power and stall any renewable projects that are unreliable and overpriced.
I thought that the EF only applied to greenhouse gas emissions from cars and trucks.
How many other products have been affected by this stupid endangerment finding in the USA?
How much have household appliances etc been neutered by idiotic CO2 reduction legislation?
BBC seems unhappy about this. Looking at there first sentence from the news summary…
Donald Trump has reversed a scientific ruling that says pollution is harmful to public health and the environment
One or two issues with this 1st sentence!!
My issue with that sentence is he is comparing CO2 to pollution. CO2 is not pollution. CO2 is a benign gas, essential for life on Earth, and that is all that it is.
The author of that sentence is distorting the facts.
Massachusetts v EPA said that the EPA could regulate greenhouse gases as pollutants under the Clean Air Act.
Beautiful. Now end federal use of secret science!
CO2 and H2O are normal products of human effort, even breathing. It is time that the EPA concentrated on its original goals of finding sources of actual toxic emissions.