EPA will reconsider its 2009 declaration that greenhouse gases endanger human health and welfare, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced Wednesday, along with dozens of other regulatory rollbacks.
The reconsideration comes after Zeldin encouraged the White House to revisit the “endangerment finding.” That finding underpins EPA climate rules, and unraveling it would have broad implications for rules aimed at clamping down on greenhouse gas emissions.
A move to unravel the finding is certain to face lawsuits, and some legal experts contend the Trump administration would have a tough time defending that action in court.
Zeldin announced the reconsideration Wednesday as part of what he called “the largest deregulatory announcement in U.S. history.”
“EPA will be reconsidering many suffocating rules that restrict nearly every sector of our economy and cost Americans trillions of dollars,” Zeldin said in a video posted on social media.
Those include Biden administration regulations to limit greenhouse gases from power plants and rules to limit mercury, particular matter, car and truck rules, and the “social cost of carbon” used to calculate the impacts of climate change.
Zeldin said the reconsideration list includes the 2009 endangerment finding “along with all actions that rely on it.”
Zeldin has “been told the endangerment finding is considered the Holy Grail of the climate change religion,” he said. “For me, the U.S. Constitution and the laws of this nation will be strictly interpreted and followed — no exceptions.”
