Trump Moves to Revoke EPA Endangerment Finding, Threatening Core Basis for Federal Climate Action

President Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency moved today to potentially scrap the landmark scientific finding that forms the core basis of federal climate action. EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin has announced plans to reconsider the agency’s endangerment finding, threatening to batter years of climate policies to protect people and wildlife from runaway global heating.

“The Trump administration’s ignorance is trumped only by its malice toward the planet,” said Jason Rylander, legal director at the Center for Biological Diversity’s Climate Law Institute. “Come hell and high water, raging fires and deadly heatwaves, Trump and his cronies are bent on putting polluter profits ahead of people’s lives. This move won’t stand up in court. We’re going to fight it every step of the way.”

The 2009 endangerment finding concluded that planet-warming pollution like carbon dioxide and methane threatens public health and the welfare of current and future generations. It was based on overwhelming scientific evidence that has only become more robust and irrefutable since then.

The United States is the second largest carbon polluter in the world, after China, and the largest historical emitter of greenhouse gasses.

The endangerment finding set the stage for protecting the climate. It underpins federal regulations that have reduced climate-damaging pollution from cars and trucks, saving 7 billion tons of emissions by 2032. It also supports regulations reducing pollution from oil and gas production and power plants under the Clean Air Act. Eliminating the finding calls these and other future critical climate protections into question.

The EPA finalized the endangerment finding less than a week after the Center for Biological Diversity and 350.org petitioned the agency to set a national cap for greenhouse gas pollution under the Clean Air Act, citing the EPA’s proposed finding and the clear evidence of climate pollution’s harm to health and the environment. The EPA has not provided a final response to that petition.

“Removing the endangerment finding even as climate chaos accelerates is like spraying gasoline on a burning house,” said Rylander. “We had 27 separate climate disasters costing over a billion dollars last year. Now more than ever the United States needs to step up efforts to cut pollution and protect people from climate change. But instead Trump wants to yank us backward, creating enormous risks for people, wildlife and our economy.”