Trump pushes to roll back key climate rule
The Trump administration is reviving efforts to overturn the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's endangerment finding, a rule that compels the agency to regulate greenhouse gases as harmful pollutants, despite legal and industry resistance.
Karen Zraick and Lisa Friedman report for The New York Times.
In short:
- The endangerment finding, established in 2009, legally requires the EPA to regulate greenhouse gas emissions. Overturning it would weaken climate policies.
- The fossil fuel industry and conservative allies have long fought the rule but failed in court. Even business groups that once opposed it now see climate regulations as inevitable.
- Legal experts say reversing the rule would be difficult, given past U.S. Supreme Court rulings and the overwhelming scientific evidence supporting the need for climate action.
Key quote:
“It’s a finding about greenhouse gasses based on science. It will be hard to convince a court — even a court with Republican-appointed judges — that the science somehow isn’t there to support this finding.”
— Jody Freeman, director of the Environmental & Energy Law Program at Harvard Law School
Why this matters:
The endangerment finding is the legal backbone of federal climate regulations in the United States. Issued by the EPA in 2009, it determined that greenhouse gases pose a danger to public health and welfare, giving the federal government authority under the Clean Air Act to regulate emissions. If that finding were to be eliminated, the federal government would lose its most powerful tool for curbing climate pollution. Without this authority, regulations on power plants, vehicles and industrial emissions could be stripped away, leaving states to navigate a fragmented regulatory landscape.
Learn more: Trump rolls back climate policies in first week in office
