U.S. rolls back declaration that greenhouse gases endanger public health

The Trump administration on Thursday revoked a scientific finding that long has been the central basis for U.S. action to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

The Trump administration on Thursday revoked a scientific finding that long has been the central basis for U.S. action to regulate greenhouse gas emissions and fight climate change, the most aggressive move by the president to roll back climate regulations.

The rule finalized by the Environmental Protection Agency rescinds a 2009 government declaration known as the endangerment finding that determined that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare.

The endangerment finding by the Obama administration is the legal underpinning of nearly all climate regulations under the Clean Air Act for motor vehicles, power plants and other pollution sources that are heating the planet.

U.S. President Donald Trump called the move “the single largest deregulatory action in American history,” while EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin called the endangerment finding “the Holy Grail of federal regulatory overreach.”

Legal challenges are certain for an action that repeals all greenhouse gas emissions standards for cars and trucks, and could unleash a broader undoing of climate regulations on stationary sources such as power plants and oil and gas facilities, experts say. Overturning the finding will “raise more havoc” than other actions by the Trump administration to roll back environmental rules, said Ann Carlson, an environmental law professor at the UCLA School of Law.

Environmental groups described the move as the single biggest attack in U.S. history against federal authority to address climate change.

The EPA also said it will propose a two-year delay to a Biden-era rule restricting greenhouse gas emissions by cars and light trucks.

Zeldin, a former Republican congressman who was tapped by Trump to lead EPA last year, has criticized his predecessors in Democratic administrations, saying that in the name of tackling climate change, they were “willing to bankrupt the country.”