Readers of my previous (August 13) post on the Endangerment Finding (EF) litigation pending in the D.C. Circuit may have come away wondering about this issue: What is the basis on which this coalition of most blue states plus many major municipalities and big-time environmental NGOs seeks to put an indefinite stall on resolution of the litigation?
As reported in that post, after the Trump EPA had finalized its rescission of the EF in February 2026, a large number of blue states, municipalities and environmental NGOs promptly filed Petitions in the D.C. Circuit seeking to have the court block that action. But, once having commenced the case, the same group of major actors immediately started engaging in tactics to slow the litigation down and postpone the beginning of briefing on the merits. Most recently on July 29, a large group of most of the Petitioners in the litigation — including some 20 blue states (California, New York, Illinois, Massachusetts, etc., etc.), large municipalities (New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, etc., etc.), and NGOs (Environmental Defense Fund, Sierra Club, etc., etc.) — filed a motion to put the case into “abeyance” for 30 days to force EPA to re-do some of the analysis that supports the rescission. While the “abeyance” request itself is only for 30 days, a re-do of EPA’s analysis could re-start the running of multiple clocks, and thereby delay the litigation for months, if not a year or more.
Now, this litigation potentially affects some trillions of dollars of economic activity. Surely, if there is to be a significant delay, there must be some very important reason. But in fact the stated basis for the motion, backed by all these big-time entities, is beyond trivial. I thought readers might be interested in seeing the reasoning stated by these entities in their own words. (The Motion to Hold Case in Abeyance can be found as the docket entry for July 29, 2026 in Case 26-1037 in the D.C. Circuit. You will undoubtedly need PACER log-in credentials to access the document.)
From the Introduction to the Abeyance Motion, here is the summary of the reason for the request:
As one purported justification, EPA asserted that regulating vehicle greenhouse gas emissions would be “futile.” But EPA changed the analysis underpinning that futility rationale between proposal and the final rule. At proposal, EPA rested on a draft report from the so-called Climate Working Group, a cherry-picked group of climate skeptics that has since been disbanded and that a federal district court found had violated federal transparency laws. In the final rule, EPA purported to eschew reliance on that report, inserting a new analysis, built on previously undisclosed methodologies, data, assumptions, and inputs.
Does that sound nefarious to you? EPA “rested” their prior analysis on the product of a “Climate Working Group” that “violated federal transparency laws.” In the real world the Climate Working Group consisted of five of the top people in the field (John Christy, Judith Curry, Steven Koonin, Ross McKitrick and Roy Spencer). It just so happens that those five people are noted non-conformists to climate orthodoxy, all of whom the official cult has been trying to cancel for years. So what?
Assume for the moment that all of those people are convicted felons who never finished high school. The only relevant question is, is there any possible argument that rescission of the EF as to U.S. motor vehicles is not futile in terms of measurable effects on the climate?
EPA’s analysis as to the “futility” issue in its Final Rule can be found at 91 Fed. Reg. 7728 et seq. There’s a lot of technical jargon, and discussion of various models of the effect of atmospheric greenhouse gases on temperature. I would say that all of these models greatly overstate the effect of the GHGs. But assume they don’t. Here are some key quotes:
[T]he statute instructs that the ultimate regulatory concern is impacts from air pollution on ‘‘health or welfare.’’ The appropriate indicator of impact is not emissions or concentrations, but health and welfare impacts. Given the speculative, multi-faceted, and multi-causal nature of the impacts cited in the Endangerment Finding (e.g., hurricanes, floods, heat waves, ocean acidification, etc.), we used for purposes of this analysis the projected impacts of the elimination of U.S. LD [Light Duty], MD [Medium Duty], and HD [Heavy Duty] vehicle emissions on trends in GMST [Global Mean Surface Temperature] and GSLR [Global Sea Level Rise]. . . .
[D]espite being the most stringent to date, the 2024 [Biden Administration regulatory] standards were projected to reduce GHG emissions by approximately 50 percent as compared to the preexisting standards for MY [Model Year] 2026 and beyond. . . .
Under the 50 percent reduction scenario, retaining a GHG emission standards program for vehicles and engines would result in a 0.007 (0.005–0.009) °C impact on projected GMST through 2050 and 0.019 (0.012–0.027) °C impact on projected GMST through 2100. Retention would result in a 0.05 (0.03–0.053) cm impact on projected GSLR from 2027 to 2050 and 0.7 (0.20–2.39) cm impact on projected GSLR from 2027 to 2100.
I can’t think of any argument that 0.007 °C of avoided temperature rise, or 0.7 cm of avoided sea level rise is other than completely de minimus, indeed likely well less than any ability to detect or measure. Get rid of the “50% reduction scenario” and the effect is still obviously de minimus.
So, do any of these highly perfumed and lavishly funded blue states or cities or NGOs have any argument that the effect of undoing Biden-era motor vehicle emissions regulations under the EF would be other than de minimus? Does there even exist any scary model or study of GHG effect on temperatures to show that U.S. motor vehicle emissions could affect global temperatures or sea levels by an amount that anyone could even measure? If such a thing existed, you could be sure that these states and cities and NGOs would be trumpeting that model or study from the rooftops. But in this 33-page motion there is no mention of any such thing. Instead, the whole motion is about EPA having previously cited the work of some “canceled” climate scientists, and now not citing that work any more.
And thus our blue states and cities, and all the big environmental NGOs, fight on with billions of dollars in funding to save us all from less than two-hundredths of a degree of temperature rise and less than a millimeter of sea level rise by 2100. And, even as incredible, the D.C. Circuit is more likely than not to go along with it.
