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EPA Takes Aim at “Endangerment Finding”
Lee Zeldin, the EPA administrator, announced earlier this month that the agency would seek to repeal 31 of the nation’s most significant environmental regulations, including many crucial to combating climate change. Former EPA administrator Gina McCarthy, who served under President Joe Biden, told CBS News that Zeldin’s announcement was “the most disastrous day in EPA history.”
The biggest target? The 16-year-old “endangerment finding,” which determined greenhouse gases were a threat to public health and welfare, and gave the EPA the authority to regulate them. Without it, limits on tailpipe, smokestack, and other kinds of emissions could be scrapped.
The science underpinning the endangerment finding is undeniable. The EPA’s own website states that “greenhouse gas emissions have increased the greenhouse effect and caused the earth’s surface temperature to rise. Burning fossil fuels changes the climate more than any other human activity.”
Given that, lawyers say that the administration seems to be pursuing a different strategy, arguing that climate change might actually be good for humanity or that the cure for climate change “was far more destructive than the disease,” as Energy Secretary Chris Wright said in a speech at the oil and gas conference CERAWeek by S&P Global earlier this month.
THE PROGRESS
The George Washington Bridge in heavy smog, photographed during the early 1970s before many of today’s clean air protections were put in place. This photograph is part of the Environmental Protection Agency’s series to “Photographically Document Subjects of Environmental Concern,” compiled 1972-77. (Photo courtesy of the National Archives/Flickr)
The EPA was created by President Richard Nixon in a 1970 executive order in which he called for “a strong, independent agency” that would establish and enforce environmental protection standards, conduct environmental research, and provide assistance to nongovernmental organizations working to combat environmental pollution.
It was a reaction to growing public concern about the deterioration of the environment, heralded by Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring and the first Earth Day. Over the past 55 years, the EPA has lowered the amount of particulate matter and chemicals in the air that cause asthma and smog, banning chlorofluorocarbons (to patch the ozone hole), regulating toxic chemicals and remediating polluted sites, banning contaminants from the water supply, and removing lead from paint and gasoline.
During President Barack Obama’s second term, the EPA began focusing on efforts to address climate change by raising the number of miles per gallon requirement for gas vehicles and to cut methane pollution from US power plants, among other regulations. Both were paused during Trump’s first term, but President Biden brought them back, along with a raft of new regulations designed to lower emissions and combat climate change.
THE POWER
During the 2024 presidential campaign, candidate Trump distanced himself from Project 2025, the conservative agenda that detailed how the president should carry out a sweeping overhaul of federal agencies and policies, created by The Heritage Foundation. “Now, more than half of his executive orders align with recommendations made in” in the 920-page document, notes Kaitlyn Wang at The Wall Street Journal.
Paul Dans, the former director of Project 2025, who resigned from the Heritage Foundation under pressure from the Trump campaign last summer “effectively confirmed what Democrats were saying all along and Trump himself denied: There really is almost no difference between Project 2025 and what Trump was planning all along and is now implementing” in a recent interview with Politico.
“It’s actually way beyond my wildest dreams,” Dans said.
“The directive to reconsider the endangerment finding and other EPA rules was a recommendation of Project 2025,” writes Matthew Daly at the AP. The document also called for overhauling the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program and the social cost of carbon emissions, both of which were included in Zeldin’s actions.
Zeldin also said he hopes to cut the EPA’s budget by 65%, which will likely involve a significant staff reduction. That could slow down the process for the rollbacks. “Zeldin’s call to action will pile on more work just as the agency grapples with downsizing pressure from the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE,” note E&E News reporters.
“They can either aggressively pursue their reckless agenda of rolling back dozens of public health regulations, or they can gut EPA’s staff,” Jeremy Symons, senior advisor at the Environmental Protection Network, a group made up mostly of former EPA employees that opposes Trump administration policies, told E&E News. “They can’t do both, because each rollback requires a team of experts who know what they are doing.”
Story Ideas
- Report on the EPA, climate change, and greenhouse gases. The EPA website still contains a list of actions the agency was taking to reduce emissions and help communities to adapt to climate change impacts. Dig into how projects in your community may be affected by the Trump cuts.
- Report on how the EPA rollbacks coordinate with Project 2025 recommendations. This Project 2025 Tracker created by two Reddit users includes some (but not all) of the actions the Trump administration has taken.This Center for Progressive Reform spreadsheet tracks Project 2025’s executive action proposals across 20 federal agencies.
- Interview lawyers about the endangerment finding and how the 2024 Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo decision, in which the Supreme Court overturned “Chevron deference,” may pose a roadblock for the Trump administration in court.
- Reliable sources:
- David Bookbinder, director of law and policy at the Environmental Integrity Project and one of the attorneys who litigated Massachusetts v. EPA
- Ann Carlson, Shirley Shapiro Professor of Environmental Law Faculty Director, Emmett Institute on Climate Change & the Environment, UCLA
- Patrick Parenteau, Professor of Law Emeritus, Vermont Law & Graduate School
- Reliable sources:
- Public reaction. In a post-election poll commissioned by The Environmental Protection Network, 76% of Trump voters and 86% of all voters said they opposed attempts to weaken the EPA. Almost two-thirds of voters who supported Trump in the election expressed concern that his EPA pick would “put the interests of polluting corporations ahead of protecting clean water, clean air, and public health.”
Correction: This article mistakenly included the Love Canal toxic waste disaster as a precursor to the EPA’s founding in 1970. Love Canal was not discovered until 1977 and led to the federal government passing the Superfund law in 1980. The reference has been removed.
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