The Trump administration has just removed a landmark finding that has underpinned federal regulations on planetary heating pollution since 2009.
For nearly two decades, “endangerment findings” have empowered the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to create rules limiting greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act. Rather than rolling back these rules individually, the Trump administration can undermine them all at once by attacking the threat finding.
Today, the EPA finalized its plans to rescind the endangerment finding as part of its attempts to revise tailpipe pollution standards. The move could also affect efforts to curb carbon emissions from power plants and other industrial facilities that cause more extreme weather and other climate disasters. And since the U.S. pumps out more climate-changing carbon pollution than any other country in the world except China, the impact would be felt worldwide.
“It is impossible to imagine a morally defensible reason”
“It is impossible to imagine a morally defensible reason for (EPA) Administrator (Lee) Zeldin’s decision to end EPA’s responsibility to reduce climate pollution that threatens human health,” said Dominique Browning, director and co-founder of Moms Clean Air Force, in an emailed press statement. “Zeldin’s legacy will be the suffering of our children and grandchildren.”
In 2009, when the EPA issued its Endangerment Finding, it acknowledged that greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere “threaten the public health and well-being of present and future generations.” The World Health Organization has warned that between 2030 and 2050 there could be an extra 250,000 deaths a year due to malnutrition, malaria, diarrhea and heat stress, exacerbated by climate change.
Now, the EPA says it’s focused on reducing regulations it sees as costly to American businesses and consumers. When the agency first proposed rescinding the endangerment finding last year, it argued that automakers “suffered from significant uncertainties and massive costs associated with general vehicle and truck greenhouse gas regulations.”
The agency announced today that it is removing “all subsequent federal greenhouse gas emission standards for all vehicles and engines from model years 2012 through 2027 and beyond” by removing the endangerment finding. “As EPA Administrator, I am proud to take the largest deregulatory action in U.S. history on behalf of American taxpayers and consumers,” Zeldin said in a news release.
The agency now says that removing GHG regulatory requirements will cumulatively save more than $1.3 trillion, reducing the cost of a vehicle by $2,400 on average (without sharing in the press release how it arrived at that number). The EPA previously estimated that repeal would save $54 billion a year, though its analysis assumes gas prices will fall and does not include additional costs from the effects of climate change. In fact, repealing the emissions rules by removing the endangerment finding could cost Americans $310 billion over the next 25 years — mostly at the gas pump — according to a report by nonpartisan climate policy think tank Energy Innovation.
The repeal is sure to face legal challenges from environmental groups. That could eventually send the case to the Supreme Court, where President Donald Trump has appointed three justices to make up the current 6-3 conservative majority. If that happens, the current justices could reverse 2007 Massachusetts v. EPA a decision that allowed the EPA to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act in the first place. By doing so, they would limit future administrations from renewing the climate rules that allowed the threat to be identified.
Congress would have to enact legislation to regulate greenhouse gas emissions again at the federal level. The EPA says today that the Clean Air Act does not give the agency the authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from motor vehicles “to address global climate change.” “A policy decision of this magnitude, with far-reaching economic and political consequences, rests only with Congress,” it says.
States could also raise their own climate pollution limits. “We cannot allow federal attacks to limit Colorado’s clean transportation ambitions,” Aaron Kressig, manager of transportation electrification at the nonprofit Western Resource Advocates, said in a news release. “Now is the time for state leaders to take bold action.”
According to Albert Gore, executive director of the Zero Emissions Transportation Association, navigating the web of different state policies could lead to greater legal risks for automakers. “Repealing the threat finding creates tremendous risk and uncertainty in the regulatory framework upon which sustainable economic growth has depended for decades,” Gore said in a press statement. “(It) pulls the rug out from under the rug from companies that have invested in next-generation vehicle manufacturing across the United States.”