EPA Moves to Kill Obama-Era Climate Rule, Slashing Emissions Protections

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is set to repeal the 2009 “endangerment finding”, a landmark scientific determination that has served as the legal foundation for federal climate regulations for over a decade.

Lee Zeldin, Donald Trump’s pick to lead the EPA, confirmed the plan during an interview on the conservative Ruthless podcast Tuesday. The move, he said, is part of the administration’s broader push to roll back environmental rules seen as harmful to economic growth.

“With regard to the endangerment finding, they’ll say carbon dioxide is a pollutant and that’s the end of it,” Zeldin said. “They’ll never acknowledge any type of benefit or need for carbon dioxide.” He argued that carbon is essential to life on Earth and that current rules overstate the risks.

The 2009 finding — issued during the Obama administration — allowed the federal government to regulate greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act. It’s been used to justify emissions limits on cars, planes, and power plants and has survived multiple court challenges. Scrapping it would remove the legal basis for many of those rules.

Zeldin framed the repeal as a business-friendly move, calling it “the largest deregulatory action in U.S. history” and a “dagger into the heart of the climate change religion.”

Environmental and public health advocates are already sounding the alarm. A 2021 Harvard study found that tougher vehicle emissions standards helped reduce air pollution-related deaths by almost 8,000 per year between 2008 and 2017. Without such policies, the number of deaths would’ve risen to more than 48,000 annually, the study said.

But the Trump administration has long dismissed the urgency of climate change. Trump himself has repeatedly called global warming a “hoax” and has prioritized expanding fossil fuel production.

Reuters reported last week that the EPA is also planning to eliminate all federal greenhouse gas emissions standards for cars and trucks, across all vehicle classes.

Zeldin criticized existing climate policies as economically destructive: “There are people who, in the name of climate change, are willing to bankrupt the country,” he said.

Earlier this month, Energy Secretary Chris Wright wrote in The Economist that climate change is “not an existential crisis” but simply a “byproduct of progress.” He added, “I am willing to take the modest negative trade-off for this legacy of human advancement.”

Meanwhile, the United Nations continues to warn of the human cost of climate inaction. Its estimates project climate change could lead to 250,000 additional deaths annually between 2030 and 2050 due to disease, food insecurity, and heat stress.

Still, Trump’s EPA seems determined to reverse course — and fast.

With input from Al Jazeera