Photograph by Nicolò Rinaldi / Connected Archives
words by miranda green
There is an international scientific consensus that climate change is primarily caused by burning fossil fuels. Still, the United States Environmental Protection Agency has decided it should no longer play any part in protecting the public from those emissions.
That’s the stark reality of a decision announced last week by President Donald Trump and EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin. Standing in the White House’s Roosevelt Room, the two said the federal government will eschew the EPA’s own 2009 “endangerment finding”—based on mountains of scientific evidence—that carbon emissions pose severe health risks and therefore must be regulated under the Clean Air Act.
As the globe has experienced the hottest summers on record year over year, and the U.S. has faced recent national disasters that have left homes burned, communities flooded, and children killed, our federal government now argues that regulating greenhouse gases should never have been in its purview.
The administration characterized the decision as “the largest deregulatory action in the history of America,” and framed the move as a strategic attack against what it calls climate alarmists. Zeldin said the rule will drive “a dagger into the heart of the climate change religion.”
For the past 17 years, the endangerment finding stood as the legal basis for the federal government to regulate carbon and methane emissions in everything from power plants to buildings to cars. The administration’s decision to block itself from using that authority is likely to have broad repercussions.
Taking a step back, it was easy to see this coming.
During his first term, Trump wasted no time rolling back climate regulations, removing climate references from government websites, and weakening penalties on polluters who failed their emissions tests. Biden reversed many of those deregulations, reinforced emissions compliance, and focused his capstone achievement on passing the Inflation Reduction Act, a law offering benefits to states and industries that switched to cleaner fuel sources.
Trump, once back in office, made it abundantly clear Biden’s efforts would be reversed. During the election cycle, his campaign received $96 million from donors who cut their teeth on oil and gas. He also reportedly made promises to fossil fuel industry heads that, if elected, he would fast-track their merger deals.
If his first-day executive order, “Unleashing American Energy,” and his proclaimed love for “clean, beautiful coal” weren’t big enough indicators, his administration’s freezing of IRA funding and vows to appeal the Endangerment Finding last July, painted a dire climate picture.
Trump championed last week’s announcement as a money-saving venture that would save taxpayers $1.3 trillion in “costly regulations” and a $2,400 reduction in the price of new cars. Those numbers have been met with heavy skepticism. Not only because it’s not clear how solid they are, but because regulating greenhouse gas emissions comes with its own economic benefits.
To start, under the new finding, the EPA will no longer enforce fuel economy standards for vehicles. Until now, those standards—which Zeldin likened to “climate participation trophies”— forced automakers to design cars that get more miles per gallon, giving drivers more bang for their buck. Without them, consumers could spend more with fewer options on the road.
Then there’s the idea of health care cost savings: The Clean Air Act is credited with avoiding more than 120,000 emergency room visits every year.
“By reducing hospital visits, sick days, and treatment of costly respiratory-related disease, the EPA estimates the Clean Air Act has created $2 trillion in U.S. economic benefit as of 2020—twice the amount Zeldin asserts the endangerment finding’s repeal would create,” wrote Lyndon Haviland, a distinguished scholar at the CUNY School of Public Health and Health Policy, in an op-ed for The Hill.
Pollution standards finalized for cars in 2024 were projected to provide $13 billion a year in reduced health care costs between 2026 and 2055. Those standards have been eliminated now that the U.S. essentially has no clean-car rules.
Other potential costs are not measurable with dollar signs.
Greenhouse gases are linked to smog-forming pollutants, asthma attacks, heart attacks, and lung illnesses. The 2024 standards that regulated greenhouse gas emissions from cars and trucks were established to reduce those outcomes.
Health care providers across the country now worry that a lack of federal oversight of greenhouse gas pollution from sources like tailpipes will lead to higher hospital rates and worse outcomes, especially for vulnerable communities in or near high-traffic areas. Marginalized communities have a 30% higher chance of dying early from pollution exposure, according to findings in a 2024 study by researchers at the Milken Institute School of Public Health.
“The Trump EPA is surrendering its responsibility, turning its back on families and communities already facing the highest pollution and health risks, and dismantling decades of science and progress,” Michelle Roos, executive director of the Environmental Protection Network, a group of former EPA employees, said in a statement.
The science is clear that greenhouse gases are harmful to human health. Further, the most recent National Climate Assessment from 2023 found that global temperatures have already increased by 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit since 1970.
A report submitted during the public comment period on the EPA’s rule by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine pushed back on frequent denials of climate skeptics: “Multiple lines of evidence show that greenhouse gas emissions from human activities are the primary driver of the observed long-term warming trend.”
They added: “No known natural drivers … can explain observed changes.”
The Trump administration’s argument doesn’t really dispute science. Instead, it essentially argues that the government doesn’t have the legal authority to regulate greenhouse gases. Zeldin said the agency’s decision was “restoring the rule of law” and “grounding policy in reality.” Experts believe the pointed language indicates the White House is gearing up for a legal fight; there’s reason to believe this could go all the way to the Supreme Court.
Today a coalition of health and environmental groups—including the American Lung Association and Physicians for Social Responsibility—sued the EPA over its endangerment finding determination.
“Ignoring the scientific evidence of the threat climate pollution poses to the health of all of us sends a very wrong message to communities across the nation and around the world,” Georges Benjamin, CEO of the American Public Health Association, said in a statement. “EPA has a duty to consider the well-being and safety of all, and the science is clear; climate change and air pollution threaten everyone’s health.”
We’ve talked before about how the EPA’s environmental rollbacks are playing out in the courts, but the outcome of this legal battle seems pretty unclear.
The justification for the endangerment finding was established through a landmark Supreme Court case back in 2007, when courts ruled that the EPA must study whether greenhouse gas emissions from extracting and burning fossil fuels impacted public health and—if they found it to be the case—to regulate them.
But the Supreme Court looks a lot different these days. Every judge who ruled in favor of that case is dead or no longer on the court. And at least two judges who sit on SCOTUS today have indicated their willingness to consider overturning Massachusetts v. EPA.
If the court overturned the 2007 ruling, it would challenge the ability of any future administration to rein in fossil fuel pollution from vehicles, power plants, or other industries, as there would be no legal justification for doing so. A new administration would have to turn to Congress to pass a bill: an incredible uphill battle.
Activists remain hopeful, eyeing potential signs of different outcomes. First, the Supreme Court has rejected several chances to rule on the endangerment finding as recently as 2023, and, in past cases that were connected, did not comment on the finding’s legality.
And of course, a case has to make its way through lower courts before getting to SCOTUS. First up would be the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, where seven of 11 judges were appointed by Obama or Biden.
States could also still move to regulate greenhouse gas emissions themselves. That would likely lead to a patchwork of rules representing a regulatory nightmare for the auto industry—but it would give all states the chance to continue reducing carbon and methane pollution within their borders.
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Inside the Largest Deregulatory Action in US History
