Trump terminates Obama-era findings that tied greenhouse gases to climate change

The Trump administration has gutted the federal government’s ability to combat climate change by revoking a 15-year-old finding that greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare and removing the legal foundations of nearly all American climate regulations.

President Donald Trump announced the move Thursday alongside Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lee Zeldin, calling the finding “a disastrous Obama era policy that severely damaged the American auto industry and massively drove up prices for American consumers.”

He claimed the decision would “eliminate over $1.3 trillion of regulatory cost and help bring car prices tumbling down dramatically.”

“This determination had no basis in fact, had none whatsoever, and it had no basis in law. On the contrary, over the generations, fossil fuels have saved millions of lives and lifted billions of people out of poverty and all over the world,” Trump said.

“Bad things happened, and yet this radical rule became the legal foundation for the green new scam, one of the greatest scams in history ... that is why, effective immediately, we are repealing the ridiculous endangerment finding and terminating all additional green emission standards imposed unnecessarily on vehicle models and engines between 2012 and 2027 and beyond.”

Zeldin said the move represented “the single largest act of deregulation in the history of the United States of America” by repealing what he described as “the holy grail of federal regulatory overreach.”

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“Sixteen years ago, an ideological crusade within the Obama administration set off the most costly regulatory power grab our country has ever experienced. The 2009 Obama EPA 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.

He also accused the Obama and Biden administrations of using the finding 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 that were based on it didn't just regulate emissions, it regulated and targeted the American dream, and now the endangerment finding is hereby eliminated, as well as all greenhouse gas emission standards that followed. The red tape has been cut.”

Zeldin added that automakers would “no longer be burdened by measuring, compiling or reporting greenhouse gas emissions for vehicles and engines” and said they would “no longer ... be pressured to shift their fleets towards electric vehicles.”

The administration’s decision to rescind the landmark 2009 regulation will erase EPA limits on greenhouse gas pollution across industries, adding to dozens of prior rollbacks of federal climate and environmental policy since Trump returned to power last January.

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The Obama-era rule underpins nearly all federal limits on planet-heating emissions under the Clean Air Act, including vehicle pollution standards, methane rules and restrictions on emissions from power plants and industrial facilities. Without the finding, the agency’s authority to regulate carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases would be severely constrained.

Over the past 15 years, the endangerment finding has helped to reduce climate pollution and protect Americans’ health, bolstering limits on power plants and emissions standards for trucks and other vehicles.

The move effectively rolls back limits on tailpipe emissions that will immediately allow automakers to start producing cars that use far more fuel than currently allowed.

Climate scientists and activists have warned that tossing the 2009 ruling would throttle the nation’s ability to prevent the worst outcomes of climate change, and would endanger people around the world in the name of the Trump administration’s push for energy dominance.

On Thursday, environmental groups and leaders blasted the decision.

“This action is unlawful, ignores basic science and denies reality. We know greenhouse gases cause climate change and endanger our communities and our health — and we will not stop fighting to protect the American people from pollution,” California Governor Gavin Newsom and Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers said in a joint statement.

New Jersey Representative Frank Pallone, the ranking Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee (which oversees the auto industry) also slammed the decision as “the direct result of having corrupt, dishonest grifters running the White House and EPA, whose only priority is lining the pockets of their wealthy corporate polluter friends” in a blistering statement.

Pallone warned that the EPA decision would cause higher prices for food, power and housing while “unchecked climate pollution wreaks havoc on property values, insurance rates, and jobs.”

“It’s a lose-lose for middle class families and an absolute coup for Trump’s wealthy corporate buddies who are being allowed to run roughshod over our country,” he said.

The Environmental Defense Fund also issued a statement criticizing the move and vowing to see the administration in court.

“This action will only lead to more of this pollution, and that will lead to higher costs and real harms for American families,” President Fred Krupp said. “The evidence – and the lived experiences of so many Americans – tell us that our health will suffer.”

"If you're busily committing a crime, it's smart to try and change the law so that it's not technically a crime any more,” author and Third Act founder Bill McKibben previously told The Independent, on the proposal. “Big Oil is not content to merely wreck the future, they'd like to alter the past as well."

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But Dr. Daniel Swain, a California Institute for Water Resources climate scientist, told The Independent last year that inevitable legal challenges could delay implementation for a year or more while courts consider whether the move was properly executed by the government.

“If this ultimately comes to pass, the consequences will be stark: it essentially would halt all federal actions to regulate heat-trapping and climate change-causing greenhouse gases as a pollutant. That would mark a grim milestone, indeed,” Swain said.

Thursday’s announcement is the latest in a series of moves by Zeldin, a former New York congressman, to gut the government’s ability to measure or respond to human-induced climate change.

He also announced last year that the agency would shutter its Office of Research and Development, which provides expertise for environmental policy and regulation, and analyzes the dangers of climate change and pollution.

This article has been produced as part of The Independent’s Rethinking Global Aid project