Trump Throws Out Endangerment Finding and Climate Regulations

In 2009, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) found that the release of six greenhouse gas—carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), perfluorocarbons (PFCs), and sulfur hexafluoride (SF6)—was a threat to public health and welfare. As a consequence, the EPA had an obligation to regulate the release of these gases. From the endangerment finding came regulations on fuel efficiency for cars and trucks, and attempted emissions regulations from stationary sources like power plants. 

On February 12th, the Trump Administration announced it was rescinding this 2009 “endangerment finding,” arguing that it was both legally invalid. The domino effect of this is that the EPA now claims it lacks the same power to regulate these gases, and existing regulations tied to this endangerment finding must go too. As a consequence, the EPA has already withdrawn fuel efficiency standards for cars and trucks, meaning the United States is going to lack any clean car standard, likely resulting in more fuel-guzzling automobiles. This alone is huge, as transportation-related emissions are the number one source of greenhouse gas pollution in the United States. 

Climate change is real. The Earth has already warmed by approximately 1 degree Celsius since the start of the Industrial Revolution. Climate change is driven by the release of greenhouse gases, many of which are from the burning of fossil fuels. A warming planet is a destabilized planet, resulting in more extreme weather events, like more forceful storms and deeper droughts, as well as driving other processes, like sea level rise and ocean acidification. While the effects of climate change will be felt by all, low-income communities will disproportionately bear its brunt. 

While some degree of warming will invariably occur because of greenhouse gases already released, humans can moderate warming—and stop certain impacts, like the extinction of Arctic sea ice—by reducing the emission of greenhouse gases. The United States has a unique responsibility to reduce emissions, as the current second-largest annual polluter and the largest overall contributor to global warming.

While these are trying times, there are a few glimmers of hope. 

First, the economy is changing and is moving away from fossil fuels on its own. 

For over a decade, the United States has attempted—and failed, thanks to the Supreme Court—to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from “stationary sources” like power plants. In 2015, the Obama Administration approved the “Clean Power Plan,” which sought to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel-burning power plants. Before the Clean Power Plan could be implemented, the Supreme Court halted its enforcement, and the first Trump Administration withdrew the plan in 2019. In 2022, the Supreme Court put the final dagger into the plan, saying that the plan violated the “major questions doctrine”—a newfound principle of statutory interpretation that says “clear Congressional authorization” is required for “extraordinary cases.” (Check out our radio show on this issue.)

Despite all this—regulations that never took effect and were spiked by the Supreme Court—something strange has occurred: greenhouse gas emissions from stationary sources dropped faster than were proposed under the Obama-era Clean Power Plan. As the price drops on wind, solar, and battery storage, it makes less sense for power producers to continue to sink money into increasingly expensive coal power plants. The Trump Administration is now trying to juice the market, ordering his government to buy power from coal-fired power plants even though that power is more expensive than alternative sources. 

Second, Trump’s efforts are going to have to survive a large number of lawsuits. And if this were normal times, they would almost surely lose; however, with Trump’s Supreme Court, this isn’t clear anymore. Legally, the Trump Administration is claiming that the endangerment finding only applies to “local” pollution, not things like climate pollutants whose harms are more diffuse. The problem with this? George W. Bush argued something similarly over two decades ago. And in 2006, the Supreme Court rejected this interpretation and found that the EPA was obligated to consider whether greenhouse gases posed a human health risk. Since then, however, the Supreme Court has taken a radically rightward turn. As proven by Dobbs (abortion) and Loper Bright (court deference to agency interpretations of statutes), precedent doesn’t mean much to this court. And here is the biggest risk: The Trump Administration is likely going to attempt to fast-track any case to the Supreme Court, with the hope that they endorse the once-dead theory that the Clean Air Act doesn’t apply to climate pollutants.