Climate Shock: Trump Scraps Historic Greenhouse Gas Health Ruling
Trump overturns the 2009 endangerment finding, a key climate regulation. Critics warn of 58,000 deaths and rising fuel costs amid emissions rollback.
US President Donald Trump has overturned a key scientific decision from the Obama era, which is the basis for all federal action to curb global warming gases.
The 2009 so-called "endangerment finding" concluded that several greenhouse gases pose a threat to public health. This has become the legal basis for federal efforts to curb emissions, especially those from vehicles.
The White House described the decision as "the largest deregulation in American history," saying it would make cars cheaper, reducing automakers' costs by $2,400 per vehicle.
Environmental groups say the move is the biggest rollback on climate change ever and plan to challenge it in court.
Speaking in the Oval Office on Thursday, Trump called the 2009 decision "a dangerous Obama-era policy that severely harmed the American auto industry and significantly raised prices for American consumers."
The Republican president said of the Democrats' climate agenda, "This radical rule became the legal basis for the Green New Scam, one of the biggest scams in history."
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Former President Barack Obama, who rarely comments on the policies of current presidents, said that repealing this finding would leave Americans even more vulnerable.
He wrote on X, "Without it, we will be less safe, less healthy, and less able to fight climate change—all so the fossil fuel industry can make even more money."
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) first took a stand on the impact of greenhouse gases in 2009, the first year of Obama's first term.
The agency determined that six major planet-warming greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide and methane, pose a threat to human health.
With a divided Congress unable to agree on legislation to address rising global temperatures, the EPA's finding became central to federal efforts to control emissions in the coming years.
"The endangerment finding has played a really important role in US regulation of greenhouse gases," said Meghan Greenfield, a former EPA and Department of Justice lawyer. "So it includes motor vehicles, but it also includes power plants, the oil and gas sector, methane from landfills, even airplanes. So it really includes everything; all the standards in every sector are based on this one thing."
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Trump administration officials are insisting that reversing the regulation will save more than $1tn and help reduce energy and transportation costs.
White House Press Secretary Carolyn Levitt told reporters that reversing this outcome would reduce automobile manufacturers' costs by $2,400 per vehicle.
Many environmentalists are skeptical of the potential cost savings touted by the Trump team.
Peter Zalzal of the Environmental Defense Fund said, "This will cost Americans more to drive these less efficient and more polluting vehicles, approximately $1.4 trillion in extra fuel costs."
He added, "We also analyzed the health impacts and found that this action would result in 58,000 more premature deaths and 37 million more asthma attacks."
Some in the US car industry are unsure about this rollback because producing less fuel-efficient vehicles could reduce their sales abroad.
"This rollback is solidifying what's already been done, like relaxing fuel economy standards," said Michael Gerrard, a climate law expert at Columbia University.
"But it's really putting US automakers in a difficult position, because no one will want to buy American cars anymore."
While this change will help the White House roll back climate change regulations, some experts say it could have unintended consequences.
Working to reverse this outcome, the Trump administration also used the 2009 decision to prevent states from passing laws that would be more stringent on carbon emissions.
The fact that this decision gave a federal authority the responsibility to regulate warming gases has also been used to suppress "vexatious" lawsuits brought by individuals or organizations on climate issues.
"The threat decision has stopped many lawsuits and has been very effective in keeping plaintiffs' claims out of court," said Meghan Greenfield of the Washington law firm Jenner & Block.
"I expect states and non-profit groups will litigate to determine the scope of this new law, perhaps mostly in our state courts."
Challenging Climate Science
A key argument for overturning the endangerment finding will be the science on which it is based.
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Last year, the Department of Energy formed a panel of scientists to write a report challenging the generally accepted science on the warming effects of greenhouse gases.
That report formed the basis for the initial proposal to overturn the 2009 finding.
But many climate experts complained that the panel behind the report was unrepresentative, filled with people who doubted the human impact on warming, and that it was inaccurate and misleading.
While it is unclear how much the Trump administration will rely on this report to mount any challenge, a federal judge recently ruled that the department broke the law in creating the team that wrote it.
In fact, a court challenge to overturning the endangerment finding may be exactly what the Trump administration is now pursuing.
Many legal experts believe they want this proposal to be tested in the Supreme Court before Trump's term ends, because if they win, the threat case will be history.
"This is really different because the EPA is completely withdrawing from this case and wants to do it once and for all," said Megan Greenfield.
"If they had won the case as they said before the Supreme Court, the new presidential administration couldn't have changed that position without new legislation."
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