State officials and local environmentalists are speaking out against the Trump administration’s move on Thursday to revoke a scientific finding that long has been the central basis for U.S. action to regulate greenhouse gas emissions and fightclimate change.
The rule finalized by the Environmental Protection Agency rescinds a 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 thelegal 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.
The finding was established in 2009 as a result of a lawsuit filed against the EPA by the state of Massachusetts. The Supreme Court ruling established that greenhouse gases are air pollutants under the Clean Air Act.
In a written statement Thursday, Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell pledged to return the issue to court.
“EPA’s unlawful rescission of the 2009 Endangerment Finding shows just how far this Administration will go to grant favors to polluters — ignoring clear Supreme Court precedent, basic facts, and decades of scientific research, all at the expense of our health and welfare,” Campbell said. “Two decades ago, the Massachusetts Attorney General’s office led the fight to force the federal government to protect the American people from the proven dangers of greenhouse gas emissions, and we will lead once again against the Trump Administration’s attempt to walk away from that responsibility. I’ll see them in Court.”
The state’s Department of Environmental Protection and the Department of Public Health issued a joint statement that also condemned the decision.
“The Trump Administration’s decision will disrupt and challenge our progress to address climate change and protect our communities,” the statement reads. “Seniors, children, and those with asthma will bear the brunt of increased pollution. Here in Massachusetts, we remain committed to reducing asthma and improving air quality across the state. We will continue to follow science, fight for cleaner air, and make sure all Massachusetts residents are safe and healthy.”
President Donald Trump called the move “the single largest deregulatory action in American history, by far” while EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin called the endangerment finding “the Holy Grail of federal regulatory overreach.”
Trump said he was pleased to repeal “a disastrous Obama-era policy that severely damaged the American auto industry and massively drove up prices for American consumers.”
The endangerment finding “had no basis in fact, had none whatsoever, and it had no basis in law,” Trump said at a White House ceremony. “On the contrary, over the generations, fossil fuels have saved millions of lives and lifted billions of people out of poverty all over the world.’'
Senator Ed Markey, who is a member of the Environment and Public Works Committee, issued a statement Thursday accusing Trump and Zelin of “rejecting the science, the law, and judicial precedent” with the repeal.
“The Environmental Protection Agency has a clear statutory requirement to protect public health from air pollutants — including from climate change caused by greenhouse gases,” Markey said. “It’s disgraceful, dishonest, and disrespectful that Trump and Zeldin are giving polluters a free pass while making working families pick up the tab for climate disasters and health care bills. Denial will not make climate damage go away—it will only make it worse.
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. Evidence backing up the endangerment finding has only grown stronger in the 17 years since it was approved, they said.
“While this isn’t a surprise, it is still a betrayal of every family across the country,” said Kate Sinding Daly, senior vice president for law and policy at the Massachusetts-based Conservation Law Foundation. “The Trump administration is trying to negate basic science. Fossil fuels cost households hundreds of dollars a year in energy bills and billions more in extreme weather repairs. And they cost us our lives and our planet. Now that the EPA has set this process in motion, we are prepared to stand together, challenge this reckless, profits-over-people decision, and hold the administration accountable by every means necessary.”
“Today’s actions by the Trump administration suggest that greenhouse gas emissions do not endanger the health of the American people. This is unequivocally false,” Dr. Lindsey Butler, executive director of the Boston Green Ribbon Commission, said in a written statement. “Repealing the finding under the guise of deregulation puts fossil fuel interests ahead of the health and wellbeing of the American people, threatening children and vulnerable groups, job growth, economic competitiveness, American innovation, and national security.”
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.”
The endangerment finding “led to trillions of dollars in regulations that strangled entire sectors of the United States economy, including the American auto industry,” Zeldin said. “The Obama and Biden administrations used it to steamroll into existence a left-wing wish list of costly climate policies, electric vehicle mandates and other requirements that assaulted consumer choice and affordability.”
The endangerment finding and the regulations based on it “didn’t just regulate emissions, it regulated and targeted the American dream. And now the endangerment finding is hereby eliminated,” Zeldin said.
Supreme Court has upheld endangerment finding
The Supreme Court ruled in a 2007 case that planet-warming greenhouse gases, caused by burning of oil and other fossil fuels, are air pollutants under the Clean Air Act.
Since the high court’s decision, in a case known asMassachusetts v. EPA, courts have uniformly rejected legal challenges to the endangerment finding, including a 2023 decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.
The endangerment finding is widely considered the legal foundation that underpins a series of regulations intended to protect against threats made increasingly severe by climate change. That includes deadly floods, extreme heat waves, catastrophic wildfires and other natural disasters in the United States and around the world.
The EPA action followsan executive order from Trump that directed the agency to submit a report on ”the legality and continuing applicability” of the endangerment finding. Conservatives and some congressional Republicans have long sought to undo what they consider overly restrictive and economically damaging rules to limit greenhouse gases that cause global warming.
